Dumarest - Incident On Ath Part 20

"You didn't see what you looked like after you'd been dragged from beneath the wreckage. And there was no one at the hospital who could help. If-"

"I know," he said. "Pellia told me."

"She learned," said Sardia. "And will learn more. They will all learn." Bitterly she added, "So much for victory."

"It was an accident. They didn't know."

"They didn't care!"

He repeated flatly, "They didn't know. Did you? Did I? We should have guessed but we didn't and we had all the clues. The way the Choud would tilt back the head and seem to listen and blink after the connection was broken. The things they knew without being told-of me leaving you after the dance, the subjects discussed, the whereabouts of others and the things they had done. The knowledge they had."

The hobbies taken up and dropped to make way for another.

The gracious living. The certainty of supremacy. The ship they had arrived in.

The Choudhury, The name they had taken. The name they had given to the computer to which they had all been linked.

He remembered the rounded nodule he had felt beneath the woman's scalp, the lack of anything similar on the heads of the Ohrm. Divergent stock could have accounted for the differentiation but he had been told they were both of common origin. And Ursula had known about Earth.

Not Ursula-Hury.

"Earl?" Sardia was looking at him, her eyes anxious. "Issomething wrong?"

Dumarest looked down at his hands and forced himself to relax the clenched fingers. Forced himself, too, to fight the sick regret tearing at his insides, the anger at his own stupidity. Why hadn't he recognized the obvious sooner? Ursula could have told him about Earth- but so could any other of the Choud!

The information had been stored in the computer taken from the old vessel; one used as a general-purpose library to deliver information to all fitted with the engrafted transceivers. The strength of the Choud and their ultimate weakness.

He said, "Where is Cornelius?"

He sat before the easel in the studio with the high, arched windows which framed the vista beyond. Paint was thick on his fingers, eyes fastened to the work as, tongue thrust between his teeth, he painstakingly daubed splotches on the ruined canvas.

"It's gone," said Sardia bitterly. "All gone. He doesn't know anything. He can talk and walk and that's about all. All the rest has been forgotten."

Not forgotten-never learned.

Dumarest looked at the man, wondering what it must have been like to have the answer to any question immediately at hand. There had been no need to memorize a single fact; a thought and it was delivered. As had been the data needed to take up pottery, weaving, painting, architecture, medicine, dancing-all that had been painfully learned over the millennia, condensed, refined, at hand at any moment. The acc.u.mulated knowledge which had made the Choud the masters of their world.

Cornelius turned and saw them and smiled. "Look," he said.

"Look."

"That's good." Sardia's voice held tears. "Very good. But try and get the lines into a pattern which can be recognized. Two lines set opposite to each other and joined by a curve at the top.See?" Her hand lifted to point at the window. "Just like that.

Now draw me a picture I can recognize as a window."

"A window?"

"An opening set into a wall to admit light," said Dumarest.

The man was like a child. "You must know what a window is."

"An opening," said Cornelius. "One set in a wall to admit light."

A child, but like a child he would learn as all the Choud would learn. As they had to learn if they were to survive.

"A moon," said Dumarest. "Think of a moon. Describe it to me. Tell me where it can be found?" He looked at the blank face and uncomprehending eyes. "Terra," he said. "The moon as seen from Earth. "Where is Earth?"

A hope which died as Cornelius frowned and turned back to his painting. Once he could have answered with facts and figures, given the spatial coordinates and so pinpointed the location of the world which had become a legend. A simple question would have done it-why hadn't he asked it?

So close!

So very close!

"Earl! You're looking as you did in the garden! As if you wanted to kill someone. But Cornelius isn't to blame. You can't-"

"No." Dumarest shook his head. "No, he isn't to blame and I won't hurt him. Have you a.s.sembled his paintings? Are they here?" He walked across the room to where canvases lay piled on a table. "Tuvey is leaving at sunset."

"I know. I'm not leaving with him." Sardia came to stand at his side, to look as he was looking at the topmost portrait. It was of the degraded angel. "You spot the resemblance?""This isn't you."

"No? How can you be so sure, Earl? What do you know of me?

Cornelius saw beneath the skin and into the heart." She reached out to touch it. "It's yours if you want it."

He lifted it without answering and looked at the one below.

"The suspended man," she explained, "He told me about it. He had yet to finish it. The face-" She drew in her breath.

"His face."

"Once, yes, but he must have added touches since I saw it last.

Now it resembles someone else." She looked at him. "He must have done it after you'd met at the dinner. After I'd made a fool of myself."

"After you'd danced," he corrected. "If there is a fool on this world it isn't you. So you're staying?"

"Yes. They need help and I can give it. And I'm hoping that he'll get it back." She glanced at Cornelius. "It still has to be there. Genius isn't something you learn from a book or gain from a computer. He has it and maybe I can get it to flower again. It may take years, even a lifetime, but it's something I have to do.

Can you understand that?"

"Yes," said Dumarest. "I can understand."

"We have an agreement, remember?"

"Forget it."

"I can't do that. These paintings are of value and should compensate you. You could take them to a man I know and let him sell them for you on a commission basis." She saw his expression. "No?"

"No." He added, "Cornelius could need them. They might trigger his latent talent or something."

"Then take one at least," she urged. "This one. I'd like you tohave it. To give you something by which to remember me."

"I don't need that to remember you, Sardia." Dumarest made no move to take the painting. "And I need to travel light."

With his clothes and knife and little else aside from his memories but they would burden enough. As would be the pain he had known, the broken hopes, the aching loneliness.

She turned, looking at Cornelius, seeing him staring at her, one hand extended. He smiled as she took it in her own, comforted, satisfied and contented as a man could be who has found the thing necessary to his happiness. The thing most men needed; a woman who loved him and whom he could love. A simple thing but Dumarest-Dumarest needed to find a world.