Bayley, Barrington J - Novel 10 Page 3

  "Poor half-monkey," he murmured. "No mother, no father—what a substitute Torth has made! Try not to blame him—I think his reason went a long time ago. Well, at least I can do something to alleviate your suffering."

  Stepping to the wall, he slid back a panel Pout had never known existed. In the ceiling the signal light went out.

  "Come. Your bars are gone."

  Pout cringed. He could not believe what this man seemed to be offering him; it was a trick. Looking at the woebegone creature, de Cogo was suddenly reminded of another experiment of Nascimento's, the birdman. Lacking voice, unable to articulate language in either spoken or written form, this unfortunate knew only one mode of expression: the C melody saxophone. He played it like an angel whenever he wanted to communicate, uttering tunes and brilliant cascades of notes instead of sentences, trills and arpeggios instead of words. Nascimento had claimed this was a sophisticated form of birdsong, and that the musician was a man-blackbird he had (illegally but unrepentantly) fused. Suspicious at the lack of any physical chimeric signs (though the birdman was rather gawky), de Cogo had discovered the truth. The "birdman" was a pure human Nascimento had raised from birth, using accelerative growth hormones. The reason why he was speechless was that he had been systematically denied any opportunity to learn language. Music, in which he received intensive training, had been his only permitted form of communication. Nascimento had even resorted to putting the growing child in deep freeze between music lessons, to guard against non-melodic imprinting. He regarded the experiment as a resounding success: the speech centre, a left hemisphere brain function, became untrainable. The left hemisphere, the site of intuitive abilities including music, emerged as the only channel for meaning.

  Indignant at seeing a first-class citizen imprisoned, de Cogo had obtained his freedom. Presumably he still wandered the Earth somewhere, as a tormented minstrel, able to convey the most rarefied feelings but not a single fact.

  But he doubted if he could persuade Nascimento, in his present mood, to see reason in the case of Pout. He beckoned. "I am your friend. I will help you to freedom."

  Pout recalled the way de Cogo had spoken for him earlier. Cautiously, hopefully, he allowed himself to be wheedled from the corner. He passed through where the invisible bars had been. There was no pain.

  He was standing on a different part of the floor!

  His blood raced. It had been so long!

  "Put this on," de Cogo told him gently, holding out a yellow garment with a bib-like front attached to short trousers. Pout pawed at it. Eventually, at de Cogo's instructions, he managed to fasten it on him. Then he stood awkwardly, shoulders bowed, swivelling his eyes from side to side, wondering what to do. He would have liked to be able to hurt his rescuer, to injure him or even to kill him somehow, but he was not physically strong and he was afraid to attack him.

  "Follow me," said de Cogo crisply. Pout shuffled after the inspector; who led him through a long corridor, and then through a low-roofed gallery he vaguely remembered.

  Then he turned left and they emerged onto a timber veranda. A warm breeze blew on Pout. Ahead of him, savannah-like grassland stretched to the horizon. The sun was mellow, hanging over the scene like a burnished lamp.

  Though he was unreceptive to the beauty of the landscape, it stirred something in him: a yearning common to creatures, whether base or noble.

  Freedom! Freedom to live! To enjoy!

  De Cogo, even while edging away slightly from the rank-smelling creature beside him, sensed this yearning. "You must make your own way now," he muttered quickly, "for I have done all I can. You are at liberty, as a second-class citizen of the Empire, if you know what that means."

  He paused. "The galaxy is wide, but hazardous, of course. You must make of life what you will. I wish you luck—now go, before the curator discovers what I have done."

  Pout stared blankly, until given a shove towards the steps leading to the ground. He stumbled down them, nearly falling, wondering if this was some trick.

  When his bare feet touched the ground, the sensation was like nothing he had known before. The grass tickled, and unable to restrain himself, he flung himself down in it and rolled from side to side.

  When he paused from this luxury to look up, the man was gone.

  If he lay down, the grass seemed to cover him. Pout began to think. To get away from here quickly was good advice. And yet ...

  He felt frightened and helpless. What he needed was a weapon. A hand scangun he could hide in his new garment and use if he was threatened (or, he thought excitedly, on anyone he didn't like). Then he would feel less defenceless.

  The pale green buildings of the museum stood scattered all around him. Pout, in a partial and confused way, was familiar with the layout. He had peeked into the data files when in the care of the robots, who had presumed that museum administration was the only thing anyone could be interested in. That hangar-like structure, with the grey metallic tinge, was the weapons house. He clearly remembered it was the weapons house.

  The museum rarely had casual visitors, but in theory was supposed to be open to all comers. Nascimento had taken a precaution with the weapons house: its entrance was from the house of ancient-style footwear, a small and dusty gallery which gave the peruser no idea that the unprepossessing door led not to a cleaning closet but to a complete and treasured armoury . . .

  Crawling through the grass, Pout made his way by degrees to where he felt he could run upright without being seen. Soon he had slipped through the vine-wreathed door of the ancient footwear house.

  Stacked all around him were cases of shoes of every description—boots, clogs, slippers, in an endless but boring series, each pair carefully displayed and described. Pout did not glance at them. He satisfied himself he was alone, then slipped to the half-hidden door that led to a bare, square corridor, whose length he sprinted.

  Then through the other door at the far end, an imposing and heavy door, needing all his strength to push it open.

  Guns! Guns of every type!

  In pride of place in the centre of the hangar was a huge feetol cannon such as were used by fighting starships. Pout experienced no curiosity as to how Nascimento could have acquired so impressive a weapon, for he did not know what it was apart from the fact that it was a very big gun, nor that it was impossible to make it work unless installed in a starship. He just stood, glorying in its sense of power.

  Nervously he coughed. The sound echoed around the building, but for the moment he was not worried. Even the robots rarely came here. Usually the only time the heavy door opened was when a new exhibit was to be put on display.

  He began to stroll past the cases, unsure as to how the exhibition was organised. He peered at weapon after weapon, but being unable to read could make no sense of descriptive plates. Finally he leaned against a case to stare at a long rifle with stock of mother-of-pearl and a golden barrel. Suddenly a soft voice spoke out of the air, startling him.

  "Force rifle, thirty-first century. This weapon projects a radiant beam whose main effect is pressure. It will punch a hole in ten-point titanium at a range of . . ." Pout continued listening in fascination as the voice went on to detail specification and history of usage. Most of it, however, was incomprehensible to him, and the gun was bigger than he wanted.

  He passed on. All the guns in the section were of the long sort, and they all seemed to be old. Where were the scanguns? Scanguns were really the only kind he had heard about. When with the robots, he had seen something on the data files. ,Though he didn't quite realize it, what he had seen was a fragment of an animated drama with psych-dimension—that is, it used a set of subliminal signals to manipulate the feelings of the watcher and make him feel a part of the action. In the fragment, there had been a shoot-out between people using scanguns. It was the most thrilling thing Pout had ever participated in. Because, of course, the watcher-identification was with the victor.

  Rounding a corner, he came to a new section. Here the cases were sma
ller. Handguns!

  But they seemed very old. He peered at the first one, and pressed against the side of the case to evoke the explanatory voice as he had just learned to do.

  "Colt forty-five, nineteenth century. This weapon projects lead bullets at a velocity of . .

  He heard no more than the first few words. Nineteenth century! What century was it now? He wasn't sure, but it was a lot more than the nineteenth.

  Quickly he walked up the aisle past a long line of variegated handguns, hoping he would at last come to the modern scangun section. He could not, however, resist a look at some of the guns of the past, with their strange handgrips, their barrels that sometimes were fluted, sometimes snub-nosed, or square, or slitted—or no barrel at all—and their variously shaped triggers, studs and slides. In his ignorance it did not occur to Pout that in all probability not a single weapon in the collection would be complete with ammunition or charge, and many would not even be in working order. His idea of a gun was something he could simply pick up and shoot people with.

  He thought he heard a sudden noise and stopped in fright. There was nothing. But then his eye lit on the case nearest to him, and he lingered to inspect its contents.

  The gun was unprepossessing. Its handgrip and shaft seemed to be made mostly of wood or some grainy material. It was light in colour, as if the wood had been carved with a knife and then left untreated. Indeed, it could have been a toy.

  The barrel, or shaft, was studded with buttons and was rectangular in shape. The stock was raked just a little, and lacked either sight or range-finder. Pout would have passed on, but some indefinable quality in the gun made him pause again. He pressed the side of the cabinet.

  "Electric gun, date unknown. Connection with Bushido. Has sympathetic circuits. Projects electricity."

  That was all. None of the lengthy details on performance, construction and history that accompanied the other exhibits. For some reason this absence of information made Pout want to see the gun work. He searched for some means of switching off the screen separating him from the exhibit, and finding none, put his hand directly into the case.

  He felt the pressure of the force-field resisting his hand. His fingers closed over the stock. As he had guessed, it was wood, a friendly-feeling substance. As he lifted it, this feeling seemed to transmit itself to him through his skin, and quiet words spoke in his mind.

  "I am yours."

  But as soon as he had taken the gun from its case another quiet voice spoke, not in his mind but in the air. "You have removed an exhibit from its case. Please replace the exhibit at once. An attendant has been summoned."

  Pout whirled about, looking for the source of the voice, his mouth open with alarm.

  Instinctively his forefinger pushed the long trigger-stud obtruding from the stock just beneath the shaft.

  The result was unexpected. A row of short pale glowing lines, pink in colour, appeared in the air, stitching through space. The row had emanated from the end of the gun's shaft. Looking afresh at his new acquisition, Pout grinned and felt pleased. Perhaps it wasn't a scangun (he couldn't see any control to make it scan) but it worked!

  "/ note you have not yet replaced the exhibit," the soft voice said after a pause. "Please do so, as the attendant is about to arrive." Pout's grin turned to a snarl, lips pulled back over the yellow teeth in his protruding jaw. He heard a near-silent purring behind him, and looked round to see a small robot wheeling towards him along the aisle.

  Where had it come from? Pout hadn't heard the door open. Pout didn't know it, but this was no more than an idler robot, such as stood in a recess in every department of the museum and wheeled out only to deliver guided tours, lectures, or to caution visitors. It could not have done him any harm. But to Pout it represented the power of Torth Nascimento and he was terrified of it.

  His whole body shook as he pointed his new gun in front of him and pressed the firing stud. He did not even train the muzzle on the target properly. The pale pink stitching appeared from the shaft, in a straight line to begin with, but then curving round until it terminated at the cranium of the little robot.

  The robot did not explode or burn up or reduce itself to ash, as he had seen on the vid drama. It simply stopped.

  The curved line of stitching stayed there, hanging in the air, until Pout took his finger off the firing stud. Then it vanished.

  Standing half-crouched for a while, his heart pounding, Pout eventually crept up to the robot. It still did not move.

  Then, with a shout of triumph, he knocked it right over. It clattered on its side, rolling from side to side until it became still.

  He had killed it!

  In his joy he turned and sprayed the weapons house with stitch fire. There was no visible effect; everything remained the same as it was. But the accusing voice did not bother him again, and he retreated to the doorway, tugged it open with an effort and ran down the passageway, through the house of ancient footwear and into the open.

  Dusk was coming on. Pout began to contemplate the journey across the savannah, wondering if he would be cold at night and what might lie at the far end. He was almost loath, at the thought of it, to leave his warm, dreary corner.

  His eyes scanned the museum complex. Now he was leaving, his hatred of Nascimento took on a poignant aspect. If only he could satisfy himself on that score first . . .

  And why not? As the suggestion blossomed, like a blood-red rose, in his mind, a light popped on in a building some distance away. Through its window a figure was vaguely visible, moving to and fro and holding something in its hand.

  Nascimento!

  It was like being offered something delicious to eat. It seemed that his feet moved him without any prompting on his part, closer to the building where the light shone, and round to the side where he found a door.

  There, his nerve failed him momentarily. He clutched the gun. Its grained stock comforted him; it felt right, sitting there in his hand. A quiet, murmuring voice in his head seemed to be saying, "/ am yours. You can maim and you can kill, with your zen gun."

  Zen? What was zen? The question died in Pout's mind as he pushed open the door, the gun pointed in front of him.

  A screen made of coloured glasslike material stood on the other side of the door. It scarcely impeded the view of the scene in the room, however. Nascimento, his saturnine features amiable and relaxed, stood in the middle of the floor. In one hand he held a long-necked glass filled with a hazy green liquid. In the other, was a scangun.

  Standing near the wall to the right of Pout were two people who were new to him. One was of medium height—a little shorter than Nascimento—and his black hair was swept clear of his pale, bony face and tied in a knot at the back of his head. There was a look of alert tension about him. His garb was strange: a loose white garment over which was fastened a sort of harness reaching from shoulder to knee, adorned at points by hooks and various fastenings.

  Beside him stood a boy: blue-eyed, fair-haired, and with a faintly golden cast to his skin. His tunic and breeches had a flowery blue pattern, and he was unblinking as he stared at Nascimento.

  The stranger in the harness spoke to the museum curator. "Your mendacity is of the sort that is total and shameless. In a way it is almost talented, for not everyone can win the trust of a warrior."

  "Not total," Nascimento replied evenly. "To enter the museum carrying weapons is forbidden; that much was true. I was surprised to see how trustingly you divested yourself of them. You see, kosho, it is your own respect for tradition that has betrayed you. I find that fitting. Like trapping a bee with sugar."

  "And the antique gun you promised to show me? That, I suppose, does not exist."

  "As a matter of fact—well, that's of no moment. What I need from you now is for you to adjust yourself to your new situation—which, being of a trained, flexible and serene mind I'm sure you can do. One word of warning, though," Nascimento added quickly as the man in harness made a stirring motion, "don't plan anything sudden. I h
ave a sympathetic receiver trained on you both, connected to a high-power pulse blast. It will know if you intend a hostile move and will respond before ever you can make it."

  The other man smiled slightly, as though to inform Nascimento that he could deceive the sympathetic receiver. Nascimento slurped from his glass and waved his scangun. "When a sage is about to act, he always appears slightly dull eh, kosho? You see, I know a little about your discipline. As curator of this museum, I know a little about everything."

  "Very well, tell me why you have lured me here."

  "It is something you might well appreciate. You see, kosho, I feel a great duty towards this museum. It has existed for centuries. It was, of course, mostly destroyed during the action of eighty-three—what a barbarous episode!—but I have worked unstintingly to try to restore it and collect together the exhibits. I see the museum as a repository of everything that has been accomplished by this old planet—the original source of human civilisation. Below ground is a department the public is kept away from. There I have a collection of human types of special interest, particularly those that are associated with Earth. You have heard of the genetic statesmen? Purely altruistic, designed to give society the best possible leadership? Well, I have one! Raised from scratch, from the old codes. I also have a clone of Vargo Gridban, the man whose work eventually gave us the feetol drive, raised from the same record collection . . .

  "But genetic codes will never, of course, give me a kosho. They are the result of training. I have no kosho. They are too hard to find, would not enter willingly into captivity, are tricky to catch and, of course, dangerous to keep. I think I may now have overcome these difficulties. You will be taken down below and kept in comfortable quarters. The boy will remain with me and my robots, and will be well cared for. Should you succeed in escaping from your quarters, the boy will be killed in the same instant. Likewise, should he attempt to release you or to leave the museum, you will instantly be killed."