Day by Night Page 6

  “Well,” he said.

  A metallic snap came with the word.

  She turned. He held the driver-box in his left hand, in the right, one of the knives of dispatch, the traditional mercy killers of the hunt, carried always within each chariot. Already he had released the catch, and the sheath had unpeeled, leaving the blade free. The two-foot length of white steel extended between them, horribly apposite projection of hatred and spoiled ambition. The tip was a razor, the sides could cleave the neck bone of a full-grown buck or lionag.

  Apparently Ceedres was about to murder her. His face was set, the brain nerving the hand to its task. Vel Thaidis’ attention was riveted in absolute belief. She could not have said if she were terrified—for terror implied a logical response, and logic had no relevance to this act.

  He poised there, letting the moments stretch, chords tautened on a chame for the master stroke that would commence, or finish, the song. Patiently, it seemed to her, he paused, that she should scent and taste this thing. (The god in the macabre jest—what had he said to the women he cast into a hell of blackness and white fires? You requested it. Now you have it. Savor.)

  And then he grinned at her. And then, as swiftly, his face again was the replica of hers, the blank mask, the darting polarized eyes, the lips parted as if in readiness to cry out, but incapable.

  The lethal blade flashed.

  Ceedres extended it to her once more, but reversed, the grip toward her hand. And unthinking, unperplexed, she took the knife from him and held it.

  Her gesture had been docile and slow, everything for her had run down, become sluggish, tranquil and without motive. The explosion of violence which succeeded dragged her helplessly with it.

  Parody of their former clasp, his hand wrapped itself over hers, grinding her palm and fingers closed on the hilt of the knife. Exerting most of his considerable strength—unnecessarily, since he had allowed her no margin in which to summon resistance, or even to be aware of his intention—he jerked her arm forward. Her body followed, impelled against his. She half lay against him, foolishly stunned, appalled and not yet understanding why. Then he pushed her aside, and dropped back, out of the bird chariot. She saw him fall on the lawn before the burnished pillars, and insanely, the next instant, the bird chariot started to rise from its kneeling position.

  To the full height of the jointed legs, the bird rose, seven and a half feet, and then, as nonsensically, started to walk back and forth along the lawns.

  The driver-box had gone from the chariot in Ceedres’ left hand. Inadvertently, or deliberately (deliberately), he had activated the chariot to a pointless and repetitive walk.

  She clung to the rail, and the blood stained her dress a rich somber russet, in a design like a torn flower.

  The hilt of the knife was also rather like a flower, jutting from the upturned petals of the retracted sheath. The blade was some inches deep in Ceedres’ breast, where she had thrust it, under his guidance, her hand locked irretrievably to the grip, beneath his.

  He did not move. Only the bird chariot moved.

  A small hot breeze was siphoned through the valley, sifting the perfume of musk-clover and fresh blood.

  Five staeds away, the dust had entirely settled. The hunt would have turned back toward the valley. Trapped in a situation of madness, she could only look from the chariot for the coming of her accusers.

  Events were plain. She had murdered Ceedres Yune Thar—yet she had been the victim, he the instigator of the crime. Already, they made a horrible sense to her, these unholy facts. But she could never explain them, although, in a few minutes, she would be called upon to do so. To Ceedres’ devotees, the Yune Kets and the Onds. And to Velday, her brother, who had loved him.

  * * *

  • • •

  The J’ara hunt spilled back into the valley.

  The hunt robots and the kites were stationed now to the rear among the sleds of anteline corpses. The capering bird chariots in the lead came strutting and swaying across the rise and down onto the plain.

  Velday, expecting the end of all quarrels and the commencement of good will, beheld random glamour and comfort everywhere. In the distant pleated cliffs, which had taken on a sort of orange blood color when seen zenithward against the singing green of the sky and the dipped sun. In the plain itself, brimmed with a honey glaze and sweet with its musk. In the three warmly nacreous domes of the temple, adrift on the surface of the glaze, and the emerald wash of lawns and foliage beneath. In the strangely humorous parading of the solitary bird chariot, that marched about there, up and down.

  Patently, it would be Ceedres’ chariot. The idiotic perambulations implied a mind wandered elsewhere, or that the two occupants themselves had wandered.

  The man lying on the ground failed to attract Velday’s attention for some while, simply because he did not fit with Velday’s preconceived ideas of what had come to pass.

  When he eventually interpreted what he saw, it was like a sudden intense hurt. It stifled him, prevented brain and limbs from operating. Naine shouted, and Omevia, their cousins and the Yune Kets took up the yell. Velday shouted nothing, did nothing.

  Then the chariots ran onto the temple lawns. Velday shut off the bird’s motion and set it kneeling. Before the chariot was down he was scrambling from it like a terrified small boy. Time had slipped: he was nine years old, perhaps, and Ceedres fourteen. They and two others had been hunting lionag, without robots or machines, for a dare. In a gulley, coming on a nest of seven sepia cats, which sprang up snarling, the boasting had shriveled and the unveiling of danger broke like a scalding rain. That day, it had been Ceedres who fired, straight at the king cat as it came bounding down on him. The ophian head, with its dripping ruff, had gone spinning one way, the body another. The six cat kindred skulked flat among the stones. Save for the king, the nest was as young and boastful as what hunted it; luck and Ceedres’ marksman’s aim had saved their lives. But in the seconds before, Velday had predicted Ceedres’ death. That day, and later days. And now the day was here, not predicted in any form, but nevertheless actual, irrevocable.

  Velday was alone. He did not recollect the other vehicles and the men and women springing out of them or nervously hanging back. They were plants or airs of the valley, nothing more.

  He had reached Ceedres now, bending, dropping beside him.

  To his everlasting shame, he might have begun to weep, but then some god breathed upon the world. One of the gods who had constructed the sky, tempered the waters, fashioned the mechanisms to serve and heal. The gods who kept harm and sorrow out of the world, at least, the world of the princes of the Yunea. Ceedres raised his outer lids, and looked at Velday.

  The polarized lids beneath had turned extraordinarily black, a black almost opaque with pain and shock, but under them the eyes focused on Velday instantly.

  “I’m alive,” Ceedres said. “That surprises me. You also.” Only the quietness of the valley permitted him to be audible. But they all heard, as they clustered near. And they all heard what he said to them next. “Her strength didn’t equal her ferocity.”

  The god who had breathed on the world, now crushed Velday under his hand.

  “What? What, Ceedres?”

  “Your dulcet sister. She thrust for the heart and missed it. My fortune held, Vay. Just.”

  Velday could not speak, stifled as in the chariot.

  It was Naine who once more shouted.

  “You’re sick, Ceedres. Don’t talk of the impossible.”

  “How else could it happen?” Ceedres said, his opaque agonized glance now settling on Naine. “Any of your machines can read Vel Thaidis’ patterns from the knife, which is still lodged in me.”

  “The priest from the temple will help you,” Omevia hissed.

  “And any of the robots of Ond. Naine, you’re a clod.”

  Velday glanced up, and saw t
he priest already gliding to them over the lawns. Between the priest and Ceedres, the crazy bird chariot still paraded. Velday stared up at it and straight into the face of his sister. Framed by its ornately combed and black-tinted hair and the green light behind, that beautiful golden face was the most terrible thing he had ever looked at—as if the sun had faded and gone out and her face was the mirror which showed it. Even Ceedres’ blood spattered on her dress was not more ghastly to him. Even the shrill sound she uttered, or what she said.

  “He’s lying to you!” she screamed to Velday. “Whatever he says, he lies. Believe me, not Ceedres, Velday! Vay—Believe me!”

  “My sister,” Velday said. He stood up slowly, shaking and yet curiously psychically immobile, as if his heart, or his heart’s soul, had stopped.

  “Take the box,” Ceedres said from the ground. His voice had no emphasis. “Let her get down.”

  Uched Yune Ket said, “Why did she stab you? For what reason? And how could she come at you and best you?”

  “Ask her,” Ceedres said.

  “Something against honor, perhaps,” Naine blustered. “Hers, and yours.”

  “Mine, certainly. Ask the priest, too. I’m done with this. Velday?”

  Velday shifted, and peered down again. Ceedres had shaded his eyes with his hand, and the polarized lids had drawn up a little way. “Velday, I don’t wish to bring blame on your sister. I spoke rashly. I absolve her, and I’ll say nothing else.”

  Velday touched the driver-box and the mad bird ceased walking and delicately kneeled.

  Vel Thaidis leaned against the rail, her petrifying mask still turned to them. But her whole figure conveyed the bizarre stigma now, its beauty revolting, dressed as it was in the raiment of something cursed. Either their instinctive judgment had cast the illusion on her with the splotch of blood or her guilt, or her fright, had woven it. Whatever, she could not protect herself from what she had become in their sight, nor could she undo the malady. And this, obviously, she knew.

  When she got out of the chariot and started to walk toward them, they drew aside. The response was primitive, but unchecked.

  The auto-priest was bowed, with two or three of the Ond robots, above Ceedres. The knife had been plucked free and lay on the turf. As she approached, Velday asked distinctly, “Whose patterns on the hilt?”

  The Ond Voice robot replied, “The pattern’s of Ceedres Yune Thar. Above them, the patterns which were used in striking: those of Vel Thaidis Yune Hirz.”

  “Yune Thar,” Vel Thaidis said. She hesitated, and said, “Yune Thar held my hand on the grip and directed the knife to wound himself.”

  She did not anticipate belief. Possibly, Ceedres might laugh. She had not reckoned on Velday, reeling about, both lids snapping back from his eyes in an excess of rage.

  “Don’t slander him, or yourself, any further, Vel Thaidis.”

  She shut her own outer lids and said, “The priest is my witness as to what happened in the temple. I think, if you question him, the scheme behind all this will become apparent.”

  The Ond Voice Robot moved over to her, and stood between her and the group about Ceedres. It was like every robot of the princely houses, aesthetically pleasing, lustrously haired and mineral eyed. It filled her with intuitive, illogical despair. Perhaps because its exterior, a copy of life, yet unhuman and unbreachable, suddenly represented how her fellow humans had become for her, doors that would not open, minds forever shielded, blind optics.

  “Vel Thaidis Yune Hirz,” the Voice said, “a crime has occurred among the aristocracy of the Yunea. You should say nothing at this time. The Law prescribes that you should return to your house, and make yourself accessible there, for a phase of correct and proper questioning.”

  Two of the robots had lifted Ceedres. The wound had been sterilized, sealed and bound in silken web. His face had paled, the odd, high-colored pallor of a metal-skinned people. His head lolled on the robot’s arm, toward Vel Thaidis. For a moment then, he smiled at her. He had not been able to resist the indulgence. It was safe enough, no other could see it, translate it, it was for her alone. It was the wine he spilled, as in the ancient formula, into her funeral urn.

  She thought of the Domm hunt Velday had mentioned, when, with the pain of the cracked ribs, Ceedres had joked to ensure his host’s admiration and kindness. The collapse of Thar had brought metamorphosis. But where old Yune Thar, the father, had warped like the plastum, crumbled like the plaster, Ceedres had become stone and steel. These closing events of the J’ara had been almost easy for him to conduct. Maybe not so easy as to bind a woman by love, to marry into what he required of her. But in the long view, this method was cleaner, and ultimately ensured more freedom. Rather than amalgamate a wife into his plans, now he need only rub her from the map of their lives.

  She stared into the vista of her future, powerless. Without being able to determine it, or credit it, she saw destruction in her path. Abstract as yet, but unavoidable, sharp as a white bone piercing the side of a dead animal, as the varnished nostril of a gun, a fire upon a hill.

  She nodded to the Ond robot, Courteously, turned and went to one of the Hirz chariots. Her head averted, she remained until Velday stepped in beside her. At the fifth hour, that Jate, she had concluded she might already have lost Velday. If she had desired proof, it had been given.

  Through the embers of Maram, in the tall bird of the jeweled aircraft, unspeaking, the last two descendants of Hirz went home together.

  * * *

  • • •

  The period of Jate elapsed, and another Maram, and the compulsory interview had not been asked of Vel Thaidis. At first, she held herself sleepless and in taut readiness. The happenings of the J’ara were definite in her imagination, and she had an almost passionate need to recite them aloud to a listener, preferably human. No human was yet prepared to listen, however. Velday had gone, either to his apartments or from the palace itself. Weary and disconsolate, she made no effort to seek him. At length, in the last hour of the second sleeptime, exhausted, she entered her Maram-chamber. She had become sure by then that she had been absurd to linger, that the summons would not come, perhaps, for several Jates.

  The Maram-chamber, windowless, without angles, poured down on her its turquoise shade, and began to play to her its gentle melodies and its rhythmic sighings. Vel Thaidis had remained receptive to these slumber inducements. She stretched on the divan, her tensions relaxing, and slid, breath by breath, asleep.

  She had set the room to carry her Maram forward some hours into the new Jate. But at the sixth hour, when she lay drowned deep in a womb of viridian blue silence, dreaming incoherently of the garden of heaven, and unprepared as only a sleeper could be, the summons of the Law was relayed to her.

  She bathed swiftly in aqua-mist. In the outer room, as the robot attendants dressed her, she drank a cup of wine to steady herself. All her nerves had been jarred by her awakening. She felt a dreadful nervousness, which interfered with reflexes of sight, even of speech and coordination, causing her hands to tremble and the inner lids of her eyes to flutter. The five hundred and five gates of paradise were far away.

  She had known in the temple valley, with an awful absence of doubt, that somehow her life had foundered and could not be put to rights. Now, wildly, all her resources seemed to gather that she might save herself, and, in gathering, revealed their inadequacy. She could not choose but fight for survival. And the weapons were broken in her grasp.

  There was, too, the dim phantom of a second dream dreamt in the Maram, surfacing, as profound dreams were apt to do, some while after waking. The details of the dream eluded her, but the central figure had been Ceedres Yune Thar, and the memory revolted her. She was still in love with him, so much was evident. Some imbecile part of her was still alert and longing for rescue at his hands. rescue from this predicament he himself had calculated with such ruthlessness.

 
Prepared, and quite unprepared, she went to the main salon.

  All the while she had thought about the interview which the Law of the Yunea would demand, she had not properly visualized its form. Or its officers. Naturally, she had not anticipated a purely human agency, for though the princes might convene a council, ultimate judgment for justice’s sake was rendered by machines. In the Slumopolis, where crimes of theft and brutality were not uncommon, small bands of robot Lawguards patrolled the thoroughfares. At moments of greater public instability they would issue in large numbers from their brown metal precincts. Those aristocrats who amused themselves in the Slumopolis, generally to sample the gaudy and uncouth J’ara entertainments which the Slums offered, were accustomed to the sight of Lawguards. Vel Thaidis was not, nor had she reasoned that they would be the sole directors of her interview.

  They stood by the wall which faced the zenith window, three of them. The gorgeous tracery of painted light which the window hung over the room, shone on their carapaces, but did nothing to modify them or reduce their ugliness.

  The Lawguards were unlike the humanly shaped palace robots, not aesthetic, and not pleasing. They served the Law before they would serve men. Eight feet in height, each was a smooth copper pillar, impervious and almost featureless. A slight rounding of the apex implied the skull-shaped electronic brain-vase within. Endless sealed dottings of plates along the armor gave evidence of the tentacle-ropes, all reportedly a staed in length, which could be unwound from the interior to catch, to bind and to restrain. The bases were currently flat on the floor, but would rise when the propulsion air jets were reactivated. By tipping themselves over horizontally and parallel to the ground, apex forward and jets at the rear, they became rockets and could far outrace all traffic of the Slumopolis, though perhaps not always the chariots of the princes.

  There was no face to address. The voice, when it came, would be a voice of metal dials and turning cogs, that took no pauses of pretended breath, that had no pretended expressions. The voice of impartial probity.