Star Bridge Part 6

He started to turn-and the searching finger found him.

It swept past. In that moment of pa.s.sing, Horn sprinted. He sprinted away from the cliffs into the desert, tripped, and rolled in a choking cloud of dust down an arroyo wall. He landed, still running, but now the light was past and he was running in the opposite direction. He was running back toward the cliffs, back toward the mesa; he was running as if death pursued him.

The whine grew louder, became a chorus. The lights swept in. Horn ran, pressed close to the arroyo wall. In the distance the hounds began to bay. Horn ran a little faster, his breath coming into his lungs in great, burning gasps.

The lights swept past him and coalesced into a square behind. It was a restless square, moving this way and that as it picked out nothing but desert and then the bell-throated hounds and their armed riders. The square broke apart impatiently and began a new pattern. It was smaller now, and the dark squares were smaller as the arroyo dwindled away to nothing and Horn was running on the flat desert again.

He dodged and veered. Events were moving too swiftly now for thought and judgment. It was all instinct to pick out the square that would be dark next, instinct and luck as the squares shifted and merged and twisted. Instinct was right or luck held as the cliff face loomed up in front of Horn, and he threw himself in a heap at the base of it, and the lights roamed restlessly behind.

Left or right? Horn chose the right, only because he had to choose one of them, knowing that the wrong choice would be his last. He crawled along the base of the rocks, freezing when a light swept close, hoping that he looked like a fallen rock.

He crawled a long way, the baying of the hounds growing louder and urging him to speed he knew would be fatal, and the fear grew that he had turned in the wrong direction. But after an infinity he felt smooth stone under him, punishing his knees, and his left hand touched something that jabbed and rustled, and he slipped behind the bush and into the hole he had left-incredibly-only an hour ago.

He came back into the valley as if into peace, more blessed because it could not last. The hounds would find his trail. His doubling back might confuse them, but their masters would soon discover that they were making a giant loop into the desert and back to the cliff, and they would find the hole behind the bush because it was the only concealment anywhere on that loop.

He crawled beside the trickling stream for a moment, because there the bushes didn't grow as thick, and then, slowly, he collapsed and rolled over on his back with a weariness that was infinite. Chased, hunted, he had come close to the end. The long journey was almost over.

He had thought of that dark room on Quarnon Four as the beginning and the killing as the end, but the bullet that had shortened Kohlnar's life by only a few days had been an end only for the General Manager. Horn hadn't thought beyond it to the inevitable consequence-his own death. He wondered now if the dark room had been the real beginning. He knew that it hadn't.

All the little things that go to make up a life had shaped him for the decision that had started him on a three-hundred-light-year journey toward death. The Cl.u.s.ter had given him birth and molded him.

In the Cl.u.s.ter, individualism was sacred. There was too much to do to waste time on laws; they were obeyed or ignored as it suited the individual. Life was struggle; a man got out of it as much as he could take on his own. The frontiers were everywhere.

Horn had learned self-sufficiency early. The first Quarnon War had orphaned him; the casual government had ignored him. He bore no malice for either. That was life; the sooner a man learned it, the better off he was.

Everything he had ever had, Horn had struggled for. He grew strong and quick to learn. He became skillful in getting what he wanted and confident that he could get anything he wanted badly enough.

All causes were alike, good and bad. A man got what he could out of them. The only person a man must answer to is himself.

Above all, a man must not care. To care is to yield one's armor against the world; to care is to hand the world the power to hurt. Let the universe go its way; Horn went his and took, with his strength, what he wanted from the universe.

Horn looked up between the leaves at the stars. He had thought that people were like stars, separated by dark walls. But he saw them now connected by a network of nerves, bridged by sensitive filaments. No one exists in himself. No action is isolated. The black ships that had swooped down on the Cl.u.s.ter many years before had helped fire the shot that had entered Kohlnar's chest.

Is it like this everywhere? Horn wondered.

He rolled over and got back to his knees and crawled forward again. Perhaps he did not live just for himself. He hadn't been killed with his parents, and now a man was dead. If he lived now, would it have its effect somewhere else?

Something brushed against his face, something dangling and furry. He reached out. It was a rabbit, still warm, hanging in the noose of one of his snares.

Horn took a deep breath. It was a good omen. A rabbit died, and its death would give him strength. Perhaps that strength would give him life again.

Horn remembered what he had decided back on the chessboard desert. A hiding place. The only place he could hide. As he took the rabbit down and began to skin it, the plan unfolded in his mind.

THE HISTORY.

Cultures aren't creatures....

And yet they are much alike. A creature is a collection of cooperating cells; a culture is a collection of cooperating individuals. Like cells, the individuals specialize in their functions; they divide labor and sometimes inherit these divisions; they propagate themselves. Sometimes they grow wildly and, unless controlled, threaten the whole organism.

Like a creature, Eron needed blood, nerves, and food. Eron itself was the heart, the brain, and the stomach.

One thick, golden cylinder drove out from Eron into the greatest engine of all, into the flaming, yellow heart of giant Canopus. It was the master Tube. It was power. Power sustained the deadly walls of the other Tubes, and the walls transmitted it to power centers at each Terminal. Power. The blood of empire.

The Tubes were nerves. Along its walls raced variations-messages-bridging light years in hours.

And through the Tubes, just as swiftly, sped the giant ships: freighters, cruisers, liners. The cradles inched them into the locks; ma.s.sive doors closed behind; air was sucked out. Doors parted in front of them, and they fell, fell into darkness, fell toward the narrowing center of the Tube until they pa.s.sed it and began to slow. Only the golden bands that encircled them insured against a fatal contact with the invisible walls. The food of empire.

The a.n.a.logy can be extended, but a.n.a.logies don't bleed on the dissection table. Eron was more and less than a living thing....

7.

THE DARK ROAD.

The lights roamed restlessly from artificial peaks, fleeing across the smooth pavement, illuminating for a second a dark form that turned its head away from unbearable brightness, jumping into the rocks, climbing the hills, crossing another beam like a giant sword, gleaming from the black flanks and golden bands of battleships with their own, roving cyclopean eyes.

The changing, prismatic colors of the monument and the radiance of the golden Tube stretching starward from it made the center of the field bright with wonder and imagination. But the perimeter of the field was dark, and guards stood in the darkness like patient shadows, unmoving, waiting for dawn to give them rest.

Among the shadow guards, a shadow moved; it was a little shorter than the others. A cloak and hood gave it a humped shapelessness. It pa.s.sed from guard to guard, stopping for a moment and moving on.

The great sealed ruins of Sunport were quiet. Elsewhere there was noise and life; here was only silence and shadows and the sweep of searchlight. The day's thousands were gone, inspected, pa.s.sed, shipped elsewhere, through the Tube at the domed base of the monument or through the older Terminal on Callisto. Only half the battleships remained around the edges of the field and the guards that were their complements. The only other ship was a small scout, insignificant beside the towering bulk of a battleship.

The desert was stirred into a sea of climbing dust by ships and hunters; they soared over the mountains and toiled over the hills and probed the hollows. But here there was quiet. The a.s.sa.s.sin had escaped for the moment, but he would not get far. Certainly he would not return.

"Guard!"

The shadow stiffened as the shapeless shadow stopped beside him. It was a woman's voice, low and soft.

"Yes?"

"What have you seen?"

"Other guards."

She was pa.s.sing, but she stopped and peered up at his shadow face. It was too dark to make out features. The guard saw nothing but a pale blur under the shadow of the hood. A faint fragrance drifted to him; his nose wrinkled. His pulse quickened. He had never been so close to one of the golden women. He could reach out now and touch her, if he dared.

He stood straight and still, staring ahead.

"You don't think the a.s.sa.s.sin will come back?" the woman asked.

"Guards aren't paid to think."

"I'm asking you to think, now." Her voice became reflective. "They laughed when I said he would be back. They said they would catch him on the desert." She spoke to the guard again. "What do you think? Will he come back?"

"If I were he, I would come back."

She peered at his face again, curiously, futilely. "Your accent is odd. Where were you born?"

"In the Cl.u.s.ter."

"You enlisted after the War?"

"Yes."

"Then you don't know this area."

"A little."

"Then where did the a.s.sa.s.sin come from?"

"The desert."

"But the hunting parties were out. There's no food and almost no water."

"A strong man could do it. A clever man could get through."

"But how would he get here? And how did he get away?"

"Beyond the ship, there, is a tree. Behind the tree is a tunnel that cuts down through the mountain, down close to the desert. He never had to get closer than that."

"You knew this? Why didn't you say something?"

"To whom? I gave the reason before."

"Guards aren't paid to think?" The woman was silent for a moment. "Maybe you're right. But then you don't love Eron, do you?"

"Should I?"

"Why did you enlist in the Guard if you didn't want to serve Eron?"

"There was another choice?"

"And yet Eron pays you, feeds you, shelters you. What do you give Eron in return?"

"What Eron asks of me and everyone: obedience."

"You think we are hard masters then, the Golden Folk?"

"Masters are good and bad. Eron remains the same. It didn't grow strong by kindness. Eron is fat; the rest of the Empire starves."

"Then why doesn't it revolt?"

"With what? Fists against battleships? No, Eron is safe as long as it has the Tube."

The woman was silent for a long time. The guard stood straight, but his breath came quickly.

"Why will the a.s.sa.s.sin come back?" she asked finally.

"Where else can he go? The desert is suicide. The hills will soon be as deadly. His only chance is to come back here and steal a ship. Once among other men, you will never find him."

"I think you sympathize with him."

"He is a man like other men. Deluded, perhaps, but he did no more than any guard is paid to do."

"At least you're honest," the woman said. "I won't ask your number. I'd have to report you for treason, and you've helped me tonight. I'm grateful."

She turned away. As she turned, they heard a faint groan. The woman started to swing back and found herself inside the arc of the guard's powerful arm, a sweaty palm clamped over her mouth. She took a quick, sharp breath and started to struggle.

Horn cursed softly to himself as he fought against the woman's unsuspected strength. Her body was surprisingly firm and youthful, and her muscles twisted wirily inside his arms.

A few minutes more and he could have dashed for the scoutship, but the woman had blundered along before he was more than dressed. It wouldn't have mattered if he hadn't been weak and talkative. Those had trapped him.

He should have killed the careless guard, the fool who turned his back to shadows, but at the last moment he had slowed his hand. Here was a man, like himself perhaps, trapped into serving Eron; why should he die? He was no enemy. And Horn had let him live, to groan. And then he had kept the woman here with foolish chatter when she wanted to leave.

Why? Horn decided to trust his intuition.

The woman struggled fiercely, silently; she twisted and kicked, and her breath came hot and quick against Horn's hand. Suddenly she stopped fighting. Her body stiffened.

"Yes," Horn whispered. "The a.s.sa.s.sin."

A wandering light swept close. Horn drew the woman back with him into the shadows. The diffused edge of the beam touched them. The woman's hood had fallen back from her shoulders, revealing a long, tumbling ma.s.s of red-gold hair and the gentle sweep of a golden cheek. For an instant Horn's arms relaxed; she almost got away from him then.

In his arms was Wendre Kohlnar, the lovely face in the coin, Director for Communications, daughter of the man he had killed.

Horn's arms tightened just in time. "I don't want to kill you," he whispered. "But I will if you make me. It's up to you. I'm going to let you go in a moment. Don't move until I tell you. Don't shout or scream. The moment you take a deep breath I'll shoot you through the back. The pistol is turned to low velocity; it won't make any noise. Understand?"

She nodded. Horn's arms dropped away. She drew in a quick breath. The pistol barrel jabbed into her back.

"Careful!" Horn whispered.

"I couldn't breathe," she said quickly. "You b.l.o.o.d.y killer!" she added bitterly.

"I killed one man," Horn said. "How many billions did your father kill? Not just men, either. Women and children, too."

"You know, then?" she said, starting to turn.

"Keep your eyes ahead," Horn snapped. "Yes, I know who you are."

"That was different," Wendre said.

"It always is."

"But why?" Wendre asked. Her voice was puzzled. "He was dying."