Day by Night Page 9

  Translucent amber fungyras grew from urns of whitish pewter. A thin jet of water played into a tank—wasteful! her Subterine conditioning surely insisted, even though the water constantly recycled itself and scarcely evaporated at all.

  Casrus was seated, entering notations on a writing machine. He had returned from the disaster at the Nentta mine four hours ago, having kept J’ara, if so it could be termed, assisting in the collapsed tunnel there. Ten men and three women had perished in the tunnel. A further thirty had been freed, largely due to the use of Casrus’ machines and robots.

  In the Subterior, Casrus had earned many names, of which most were jeering, but no one had jeered yestermaram, nor this Jate. Temal had greeted him at the porch of Klarn, he covered in the filth and mulch of Nentta, from which phosphor was dug. She ordered food for him while he bathed. Yet here he was now, tirelessly at large once more. She knew him to be young and strong, yet who could quite credit his calm fanatical vitality. She doubtless understood this much, his prince’s guilt was worse than her own. Once acknowledged, it had not let him rest.

  Seeing her, he closed the machine and came to her side.

  When he lightly stroked her cheek, her bi-colored hair, she glanced aside as if she imagined that perhaps he saw the averted faces, torn hair of dead women, dragged from a pit by mechanical claws.

  “I’d thought we might spend this Maram together,” he said quietly, “but first I must deal with this.” He showed her a metallic bead, a message capsule, such as any of the thousand or so princely houses might send to each other, either from a palace or from a relay post upon the street. “House Klovez.”

  “But they’re your enemies,” she said at once. Her judgment was plainly instinctive, based upon the tutelage of her origins.

  “No,” he said, “there’s no closeness between us, but they’re very young. Not enemies.”

  “Casrus,” she said. He had trained her from calling him “lord” or “prince.” “Casrus, all I’ve heard of the Klovez house is bad. Admittedly, my sources are Subterine gossip—”

  “Admittedly they are.” She lowered her eyes, immediately silent, and he said, “I don’t discount your warning, Temal. But I’ve known them since my boyhood. Two brats, two parasites, as all the aristocrats are, myself included.”

  “I heard things of their parents. These two are conspirators, whispering together, enjoying little jokes together. And she is a Fabulast.” The title was spoken with something approaching hatred. “What can they want of you?”

  “Surprisingly, my help. For some reason.”

  “That which you can never refuse. How clever of them to know as much.”

  “Children,” he said dismissively.

  “I was a child,” said Temal. “I was a child in the Subterior. And things I did there don’t fit your vision of a child.”

  Casrus smiled. Almost delicately he brushed a smoke-fine tendril of hair from Temal’s forehead. Sliding his thumb across the bead, he activated it that she might hear. It was a girl’s voice which spoke, the voice of Vitra.

  Casrus Klarn, I require and entreat your assistance. I don’t ask idly. My brother and I are in desperate anxiety. For the sake of your own goodness, which we know you possess in such great measure, please visit us before this Jate is ended, at Klovez.

  Looking puzzled and perturbed, Temal said, “Some ruse. Beware of her.”

  “Oh,” he said, as lightly as he had stroked her face, “Vitra has some propriety and some sense, for all she pretends otherwise. I think I shall escape alive.” He was still smiling, a fraction amused, a fraction moved by Temal’s concern.

  “I can’t prevent your going,” said Temal.

  “No, not on this small matter. Suppose I can aid them in some way. I may then enlist their aid in turn.”

  “Such as they would never loan so much as a lamp to benefit Subterines.”

  “We’ll see,” said Casrus. For a moment his face was shadowed, very nearly wicked, very nearly evil with its determination to use all in his power to alleviate the guilt of the princes, the pain of their slaves.

  Temal watched him leave the house, walking not riding the thoroughfares, striding across the gray, glinting city. Anticipating, she looked toward the spot where Rise Uta distantly tossed its glows against the sky of rock. Temal could never have seen that other upper sky of blackness and white starfires. Certain of her class toiled beneath it, in the wake of great mechanisms, their bodies encased in coffins of oxygen. Temal had been condemned to die under it, before Casrus spoke for her. Now it was nothing. Here she would live long, maybe reach her hundredth year. Her ashes might lie, as did the ashes of aristos, in an urn, although theirs were of silver.

  But she touched her forefinger to her tongue—a defiant gesture of the Subterior, meaning: Life lingers.

  * * *

  • • •

  It was the seventh hour of Jate, yet when Casrus reached the portico of Klovez, the palace was in total blackness. If Casrus’ preoccupation was stern, even grim, yet it was factual, and controlled. He felt no foreboding, and hazarded on some jest of the girl who had invited him. Thus he announced his presence to the door with continued tolerance.

  Then, standing by the door, receiving no answer, he did perceive the slightest crackle on the air that served to suggest an infantile prank. He had half swung away, when the door sawed wide, and Vitra herself stood before him.

  He was not impervious to Vitra’s beauty, but to him, her attraction had been thoroughly overlaid by a veneer of inanity; tiresome, pointless and prodigal. Nevertheless, this was not exactly the Vitra he recalled. Crescents of shadow lay under her eyes and her hand trembled, holding up a barbaric contraption of rose-red fires.

  “Casrus,” she whispered, “it is so good of you, so good—”

  Pale in her smoky white against the interior of the black house—not a lamp anywhere—and framed in roseate flame that accentuated her pallor, she seemed about to faint. Casrus reached by her and took the torch branch away from her grip.

  “What has happened?”

  “Oh, what has not?” She put her palm over her lips as if afraid to speak, then removed it, and murmured, “The door won’t open except when operated from within. Nothing will do what it’s supposed to. The lifts refuse to move—the lights—” She raised her arms like a wraith in some absurd theatrical drama and backed away, and the gloom seemed to swallow her. Casrus went after her. The door did not shut.

  The house was cold, deadly cold as the streets of the Subterior.

  “Bring the light, and please follow me,” said Vitra rather primly from the dark ahead.

  He did as she asked, and she led him swiftly up a service ramp—Klovez had no actual stairway of any sort—and through black corridors, and at length into the anteroom of her apartment.

  Here, other firelights were burning, serving both for illumination and to thaw some of the depressive chill from the air. The feminine chamber was otherwise like most of its kind, ornate, adorned with fragile decorations. Of the final fragile decoration—Vyen—there was no sign.

  “Where’s your brother?”

  “When I had sent our message to you, he himself went to Klastu on a similar errand. I’m afraid we will need the kindness of all our friends. But it was to you we turned for advice.”

  “You flatter me.”

  “Oh no, I’m beyond that. Look about you. Do you see what’s become of us?”

  The electric crackle in the atmosphere had resolved itself for Casrus as the surplus energy of another’s fright. He guessed what had occurred. Some years before, such an eventuality had been the subject of a theatrical in sector Dera. The drama had caused a furor of alarm and had been declared in bad taste. The unlucky dramatist, a worker Upperling currently living on his talents in the Residencia, had come close to relegation to his former home. But that was theater. In reality, the princes ha
d been spared such an event: the collapse of a palace’s total technological foundation. Till now.

  “What caused this?” Casrus inquired.

  Vitra covered her face with her hands, a familiar gesture, apparently now genuine. He did not know she was struggling with the impulse which shouted: I! I caused this!

  “Neither Vyen nor I,” she muttered at last, “know what caused it.”

  “You’ve been very unfortunate,” said Casrus. “I will, of course, help you in any way. Do you need transport to a computer complex?”

  Vitra stared at him, hands removed, shocked.

  “Do you think we can beg help of the computers?”

  “What else?”

  “The Klave is geared,” said Vitra, glaring at him with something very like abhorrence for his obtuseness, “to assist only the facets of itself which independently support themselves. The Klave’s technology is finely balanced. It will spare nothing to Klovez—how could it? We will be exiled to the Subterior. I suppose you’d think that fitting for us?”

  “This is an old argument. No, I don’t think that fitting for you, since neither you nor Vyen could survive it. Nor do I think the city computers or the Law of the Klave would demand such a thing. You’re confusing life, I believe, with a drama.”

  Vitra started wildly.

  “What?”

  “The infamous Dera theatrical five years ago.”

  Vitra gave a vulgar, terrified little laugh.

  Casrus put down the torch branch on a table, went to her and took her icy quivering hands.

  “Even if such an impossible demand were made, it would then be the duty of your neighbor houses to loan you sufficient machines to repair Klovez technology. If repair were unobtainable, the loan would be extended to support you indefinitely.”

  “Oh, our neighbor houses, our friends,” she sneered, her large eyes bleak, “Do you imagine they’d care? Olvia, the Klurs, the Klinns—they might take us in for the novelty a Jate or so. But once they were weary of that, they’d put us out, then turn away and let us die.”

  “If you rate your friends so low,” he said, “you should not call them friends.”

  “But you,” she said suddenly, melting, her eyes becoming great pools of gray. “You, that we never dared to call a friend, you wouldn’t desert us?”

  “No. Whatever I could do for you, I would.”

  “Which is strange,” she murmured, “when you despise us.”

  “You mistake me. But to offer assistance would be, in any case, common courtesy, no more.”

  “Oh Casrus,” said Vitra, and lowered her head, with its brief wave of black satin hair, upon his breast.

  He put one arm about her, and as she heard the steady beating of his heart under his velvet shirt, Vitra was amazed its rhythm did not falter. If he would only warm to her now, both might achieve salvation. But if he did not warm, then his punishment would be awful. And while she quite frantically trusted that at this moment she must win him to her, yet some depth of awareness warned her she would not. That being so, all softness must leave her; in disappointment she could become as rapacious as her brother in his piquant envy. This love of hers for Casrus, which had hurt and inconvenienced her with its passion, was after all utterly selfish, though utterly ingrained, irrevocably a part of her.

  “If I begged you,” she said, in her light musical voice, “begged you to offer me your protection—”

  “Vitra, I’ve said I will do everything I can.”

  “I mean,” she said, “would you take me under your own roof? Nothing could harm me there. I would be safe.”

  “No, Vitra. I can’t make you my ward.”

  “But—” she said. I mean, she thought, make me your wife, you fool. Or do you realize I mean that, and are you playing with me? His heart kept up its sonorous even tempo. It was hers which scurried. “How—how can I live here?” she stammered.

  “For the sake of your own honor,” he said quietly, instructing her. “And for your comfort, too, you’d do better in a household where there are women of your own class.”

  “You mean, if I were to live at Klarn, I would annoy you with my chatter and my silliness. You don’t know me, Casrus. Don’t judge me by my public face. When have I ever had the chance to be serious or profound? It must mean something that the computers selected me as a Fabulast—” She broke off, remembering the outcome, coincidence or curse, that had evolved from her Fabulism, was evolving. As she lay daintily against Casrus, willing his body to notice hers, she inadvertently visualized Ceedres Yune Thar drawing Vel Thaidis into his brazen arms, drowning her with a kiss, and how, despite her dizzy hunger, she had said to him in a voice of adamant: “No and no. Forever and always, no to you.”

  “That you’re a Fabulast should encourage you. You perform a task the computers register as necessary. Therefore, why should they cast you out of the city?” Casrus’ voice was level. He was being kind to her. He considered the Fabulisms dangerous drugs, derogatory rather than healing in their effect on the workers.

  “Casrus,” she said. And she put back her head again and looked at him. The living flames made her very lovely indeed, and this she knew. Generally, she had had her own way with the men of her class, leading them where she would, denying them what she had no mind to give, and exacting obedience in everything. “Am I,” she said, “so revolting to you that you put me off in this way?”

  “What exactly are you asking me for?” he said. The directness unnerved her. She cried: “What else but sympathy, your strength to depend on—”

  “That you have.”

  “But you are—so distant from me—”

  “No, Vitra. You are distant, not I.”

  “In what way? I don’t wish to be.” Too shyly she added, “I feel I am almost your sister, Casrus. I’ve known you since we were children.”

  “I meant a distance in terms of your preoccupations and desires.” She heard the impatience then in his voice, and his arm was abruptly no longer about her.

  “If you find me wanting,” she said, “teach me to be better.”

  “Vitra, this isn’t the hour for lessons. I’ll take you to the computer complex.”

  “No!” Lacking other persuasion, she folded herself against him once more, and said very low, “I’m afraid. Be my brother, Casrus, and put your arm about me again.” And from the corner of her eye, she saw a flicker of movement at the edge of the open door behind Casrus, the door to her bedchamber—another man also growing impatient with her delay: Vyen, waiting on his cue. She had had a difficult time convincing him that any of this extravagance was essential. “If we can gain what we wish peacefully,” she had argued, “it is far better.” “But Casrus,” Vyen had said in an unliking tone, “will never offer you marriage. We won’t get access to Klarn that way.” “But let me try,” she had insisted. “Belittle yourself then,” Vyen had said. “Lick his boots and crawl to him, and see what it will get you.” Now she saw. And now the somber side of her love was already turning its face to her, darkening the landscape of her thoughts. That Vyen heard everything only increased her shame, as both had known it would. And clearly Casrus would not be her brother, or hold her to him, or cease to be fraternal suddenly and draw her into his arms as Vel Thaidis had been drawn and drowned in the arms of Ceedres. No. Casrus had stood aside from her, leaving her shipwrecked on the air. What now? If she fainted, would he catch her? Probably not. Could she weep? No, her frightened tears had dried.

  “I am wretched,” she exclaimed feebly, “and you are cruel to me.”

  “When will Vyen return?” Casrus asked, on a note so ironic that for a moment she suspected he understood their game. But only a moment.

  “I don’t know. Do you mean to leave me here alone?”

  “Not if you insist I should remain,” he said, resigned.

  “I am this horrible,” she cried, “th
at to stay with me is a punishment to you.”

  He did not reply.

  And now the dark star of disappointment and fury rose to the zenith of her brain’s sky. It was true. She could not influence him. If he considered her fair, it was not a kind of fair that he wanted. Not as a companion, let alone a legal partner to be mistress over Klarn.

  Let him be confounded then, he deserved it all. He might have had her and the joy she could have brought him, instead he would have her bane, the double bane of herself and Vyen. Let him revel in that!

  She turned and walked directly to a crystal table and took up from it the jeweled dagger lying there, artistic heirloom of Klovez, sharp enough to kill. Raising it, she flung around on Casrus, letting the firelights pour down the steel blade.

  “You are not my friend,” she said. “I can trust no one. I don’t intend to die in the Subterior. I shall kill myself at once.”

  She perceived instantly he doubted her. A mild exasperation went over his face.

  “Vitra, your histrionics—”

  “My histrionics are the prelude to my death. Wish me Kaneka.” It was the name of paradise in the old legend.

  She had been schooled to a pretense of wounding herself, but at the final second, either a divination of his perception warned her to be thorough, or else sheer rage took charge. She slashed the knife across her arm, tearing both sleeve and flesh. The gash was slight but spectacular. Blood oozed forth, a sable red, appalling her. Her sight blurred and, stupidly, she almost let go the dagger, before she recollected she must not. Then Casrus had taken the weapon from her grasp. She listened as he said something to her, that she had only scratched herself, that she had lost her reason. Although he held her wrist, she did not heed him, nor the shining blade with its magenta smear. Instead, her gaze slid beyond him, next downward, to conceal what she had seen. Soft and agile, Vyen was prowling across the room, coming at Casrus’ back, his hand clenching its silver rings and whitened knuckles upon a box of heavy polished onyx. Vyen made no sound, his feet like silk on the rugs. He moved like the fume of the fires across the airless, heatless room.