Modesitt, L.E. - The Hammer of Darkness

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2024-11-30 0 0 524.96KB 173 页 5.9玖币
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Part I
The Planet of Eternal Light
I
In toward Galactic Center, the myth implies, there is a star so hot it is a mere (lot in the sky of that planet
where the God of Darkness and the Lady of Light live- Just as this sun has only one planet, so is there
only one God, the God of Darkness.
In fact, stars that hot, FO or hotter, don't have planets. And if they did, the star wouldn't last long enough
to allow planetary development of a terrestrial environment.
Even if such a god existed and if he could build a planet from scratch, why would he be humanoid or
interested in humanity?
—
Lectures on Pan-Humanoid Myths
Prester Smythe Kinsel
University of New Augusta
1211 A.O.E.
II
The young woman sits on the edge of the ornate bed where she is being watched.
“Everyone watches the Duke's daughter,” she says in a low voice. Even the Duke's security force. More
since the accident, she suspects. She cannot remember much of what she knows she should know.
The Duchess was solicitous, and her father the Duke growled. Yet he cares.
She frowns and leans forward, letting her long black hair flood over the shoulders of her pale blue travel
suit.
Why should her memories be so cloudy? She can remember everything since she returned so clearly, but
the people around her, the rooms, they all have a clarity that the past does not have.
Yet she belongs. The well-thumbed holobook in her father's study shows images of her growing up,
standing at her father's knee, holding his hand.
Perhaps her studies at the Institute will help. Perhaps time will remove the awkwardness of relearning her
past. Perhaps...
“Back into the fishbulb,” she says out loud, crossing the room that would have held five of the single
sleeping room she had occupied at Lady Persis'.
Somehow, the long row of garments hanging in the wardrobing room does not surprise her, although she
has not remembered them. She walks through the wardrobe to the tiles and direct light of the bath.
Neither does she remember its luxury. Half shrugging, she catches sight of herself in one of the full-length
mirrors.
“Disheveled,” she observes, looking at her hair. Something is right about it, for the first time in a long
while, and something is not, nagging feelings she cannot place.
She squints until her eyes close. She opens them again. Her reflection awaits her.
III
“I don't understand, Martin. You're not registered ...”
Not
registered
. . .
a Query
on your name . . ,
blocked even from the Duke
's code , . .
Kryn's words are clipped, and even without the underlying concern he can sense, Martin knows of her
unrest from the shortened speech.
The courtyard, the one where they always meet, is chill, as chill as the weather controls ever allow on the
Planet of the Prince Regent of the Empire of Man. The little winds shuffle the small needles from the
miniature cone-pines back and forth along the interior walls. No shadows, for the overcast is heavy
enough to block the winter sun, and the climatizers have not succeeded in dispersing the clouds.
Kryn shivers, and the blue-clad guard involuntarily steps forward out of the corner, then back into the
columns.
Always the
guards.
Martin reflects, always the
trappings of power.
His eyes flicker over the communit bracelet that links her into the Regency data system, the blue leather
overtunic that costs more than his total tuition, the sunpearls on her ring fingers. He clears his throat.
“It's not that simple, Kryn.” Not simple at all. He cannot register for further grad study, not with the
Query stamped against his name.
No reason is given, and the junior registrar with whom he'd managed to get a face-to-face appointment
had not known anything ..,. nothing except a few vague thought fragments unvoiced to Martin.
. . .
has to be dangerous
. . .
deadly
. . .
not even Darin will meet him
. . .
why me?
, . .
Darin's ex'Marine
.
. .
afraid of a student .
. .
why me?
“The real reason?” Martin had pressed. “Imperial Security, Citizen MarteL That is all the University is told.”
Her smooth dark brow and open thoughts had revealed nothing else, even when he had probed deeply.
And no one wanted to talk to him.
That had been it. Someone, somehow, had fed the results of the damned paracomm tests to Imperial
Security, and he was out of grad school and on his way to the mines or the Marines . . - the only
employment open to someone who was Queried.
“Why not?” snaps Kryn, her cold words bringing him back from his thoughts into the chill of the
Commannex courtyard.
“Because I can't get a job, any job, on Karnak. With no credits, I can't free-lance. If I could, no one could
hire my services. So it's either off Kamak, or the Marines and off Kamak shortly. That's the choice.”
“There has to be another one.' Her voice is matter-of-fact. So are her feelings, Martin can tell and she is
as calm as her mother, the Iron Duchess, in telling a subject he is mistaken. Kryn will be Duchess, or
more, Martin knows.
“If you could be so kind. Lady Kryn Kirsten, as to suggest another alternative for your obedient subject,
Martin Martel, I would be most deeply obliged. Particularly since my student status will be terminated
rather shortly.”
“How soon?”
“Tomorrow ... today ... perhaps three days. The term is over, and the minimum guarantees of the
Regency toward a Free Scholar have been met.”
He looks down at the flat white of the marble pavement, then lifts his eyes to watch the dust devil in the
far corner scatter a small heap of cone needles. The sunlight floods abruptly into the courtyard. “The
climatizers succeed again,” the ex-Scholar remarks, “bringing light into darkness, except for a few of us.”
“Martin!”
He realizes that she wants to stamp her foot but refrains because the action would be unladylike.
He chuckles, and the low sound eddies through the columns. The guard in the shadows, now that there
are shadows with the full winter sunlight beaming down, edges forward.
“What will you do?” Her question comes almost as a dismissal, an acceptance.
“I don't look forward to spending five years in the ore mines . . . and I don't have the heroic build of the
successful Imperial Marine. So I'm somewhat limited.”
“You aren't answering the question.”
“I know. You don't want to hear the answer.”
“You could leave the Empire . ..”
“I could. If I had the creds for passage. But no one can hire me to pay my way, except an outsider, and
outsiders aren't allowed to downport here. And I don't have passage to the orbitport.”
“I could help.”
“I've already made arrangements.”
“You didn't!”
'The Brotherhood is looking for comm specialists, so . . .”
“But”—her voice sharpens—”that's treason.”
“Not unless the Regent changes the law.”
He ought
to.
Brotherhood is nothing but trouble.
“Perhaps he
will,” Martin supplies the follow-on to her thought. “But they do pay, and will clear me from Imperial
space, if necessary.”
“Why?”
“Because, Lady Kryn Kirsten,” Martin answers the ques' tion she meant, “I came off the dole, and I will
not spend five years at slave labor in the hope that a black mark will be lifted from my name.”
“May be Da—, the Duke, I mean, could take care of that.” Martin refrains from trying to read her
thoughts. “I doubt that even the Duke could remove the Prince Regent's Query. And why would he? For a
penniless scholar who's attracted to the very daughter he's planning to marry into the Royal Family?”
“Martin Martel! That's totally uncalled for.”
How did he know? Never said
. . .
paracomm?
“Realistic,” he says in a clipped tone, trying to allay her suspicions. “Duke of Kirsten holds the most
powerful House on Kamak next to the Regent. What else?”
So obvious, so obvious even to poor sweet
Martin.
He cannot keep the wince from his face.
“Martin ... what, how do you know?”
He reads thoughts, I know he does. How long? What does he really
know?
“Nothing that the gossip tabs haven't already spread. Nothing every student in the Commannex hasn't
speculated.”
Sweat, dampness, runs down Martin's back, with the perception that the guard is drawing his stunner,
edging the setting beyond the stun range toward lethal.
Martin concentrates on the energy flows in the stunner, puzzling how to divert them, to distract Kryn from
her iron-cold purpose, to just leave without raising any more fear and suspicion.
Aware of his sleeve wiping perspiration off his forehead, strange itself in the courtyard chill, he stammers.
“Nothing . . , nothing more to be said. Lady Kryn, time to depart . . . fulfill my contract to the Brotherhood
. , , and then if you hear of a newsie named Martel on a far planet ... think about corel”
No .., no! Treason? Corel. Romance and flowers
to the
last. But a Duchess is as a Duchess does.
Her hands touch the Stud on her wide belt, the stud that screams “emergency” to the guard. The tight-
faced man in blue aims the stunner.
Zinnnng!
The strum of the weapon fills the courtyard. “I wish you hadn't, Kryn. Wish you hadn't,”
mumbles Martin, knowing that he has bent the focus of the beam around him, knowing that such is
impossible.
The guard knows it also, looks stupidly down at the stunner, then raises it again, only to find that the
blackclad student has disappeared, and that tears stream down the cheeks of the Lady Kryn Kirsten.
Along the courtyard wall, behind the black marble bench, lit by the slanting ray of the afternoon sun, the
dust devil restacks the pile of cone needles.
IV
Aurore
No shadows has the noon; no darkness has the night, And no man wears a shade in that eternal light.
The night has not a star; the sky has not a sun, Nor is there dusk nor dawn to which a man can nm.
No breakers crash at night, nor fall on sand unlit. No lightning flares the dark where coming years might
fit.
No dawn will break like thunder; no eve will crash like surf, No shadows seep from tombs to mark its
golden turf.
And if that's so, then why does darkness stalk the sky, And only one god cast a shade to those who die,
And only one god cast a shade for those who die?
v
The overhead is pale yellow. The color is the first thing he notices. That, and that he is on his back,
stretched out on a railed bed of some sort.
The second observation is that he wears a loose yellow robe, nothing more, that is hitched up close to his
knees.
There is no pillow, no sheeting, just a yielding surface on which he lies. He lifts his head, which aches
with the pain he associates with stunners. Kryn's guard had missed, but not Boreas.
“You'd think you'd learn, Martin,” he mutters.
You'd think you'd learn, Martel
He scans the room. No one
else is present. The portal is shut. A single red light on the panel next to the portal is lit. The unlit light,
he presumes, is green.
The railing lowers with the touch of a lever, and Martin swings his legs over the edge and eases himself
into a sitting position. Rubbing his forehead with his left hand, he continues the survey of his quarters.
“Wonder if I'm being monitored.”
Wonder if I'm being monitored.
Besides the bed, there are two chairs, a low table rising out of the flooring between them, a higher
bedside table, an opaqued window screen, and a closet. The sliding doors of the wardrobe/closet are half
open, and Martin can see that his few belongings have been laid out on the shelves or hung up. The
travelbag is folded flat on the top shelf,
'
He shakes his head, winces at the additional pain the movement generates, and studies the room silently.
No speakers, no inconsistencies in the walls that could conceal something.
As he lowers himself to the floor the room wavers in front of his eyes.
“Not again!” He recalls the paratest that led to his confinement, that test which seems so distant, even
though just days past.
Not again!
The echo pounds into his skull. Slow step by slow step, he covers the meter or so from his bed
to the wardrobe, putting each foot down carefully, unsure of his perceptions and his footing. By the time
he puts out a hand to lean on the wall edge of the wardrobe, he is dripping sweat. He shivers.
The robe, which had felt almost silky when he awoke, grits against his skin like sandpaper. Martin fingers
the cuff, but the material still feels smooth to his fingertips.
He shivers again, but ignores the chill to concentrate on the personal belongings laid out on the chest-
level recessed wardrobe shelf.
Two items leap to his eye. The first is the solidio cube of Kryn, which glows with a new inner light. The
second is the Regent's Scholar belt clasp. Before, it had been a dull maroon. Now it glowers at him with a
crimson malevolence.
One hand against the wall, stilt propping himself up, the former scholar and present fugitive/prisoner
checks the garments. The robes provided by the Brotherhood have all been replaced with simple pale
摘要：

PartIThePlanetofEternalLightIIntowardGalacticCenter,themythimplies,thereisastarsohotitisamere(lotintheskyofthatplanetwheretheGodofDarknessandtheLadyofLightlive-Justasthissunhasonlyoneplanet,soisthereonlyoneGod,theGodofDarkness.Infact,starsthathot,FOorhotter,don'thaveplanets.Andiftheydid,thestarwould...

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