Chapter 2
Asher raced down the corridor in hysterical panic, his legs churning, darting around surprised passengers, skidding around corners, almost blind in his fear. The Cloak was gone, forgotten as the uproar in his head crowded it out.
At length his breath began to come in gasps, and his terror dug deeper into him. He blundered along, oblivious to the stares of alien and human alike. Get away, get away, his mind shouted. Get away.
Nearly tripping over an Andalian snail, he staggered forward, off balance, and collided with an elderly gentleman, off whom Asher careened and then grabbed at in an instinctive effort to keep the man from falling. For a moment they clung there, the man clutching at him, pain in his eyes, Asher trying to steady him. The snail cast them a look of contempt, and oozed away.
“Sorry, sorry,” Asher babbled inanely, panic transferred for a moment into a fear that he had injured the old man, or was maybe causing a heart attack.
The man caught his balance, and the moment he did so, backhanded Asher across the face, sending him staggering. The blow was weak, but it brought tears into Asher’s eyes.
“Reckless young fool!” the old man hissed, adjusting his clothing with a feeble dignity. “You ought to be locked up. All of you. I . . .”
Asher moved unsteadily backwards, remembering why he was running, fear rising again within him.
“Sorry,” he said again. Inside him, the thought came that he was showing the flaw. The flaw that had caused him to fail the Test.
The man stepped forward suddenly, hand raised to strike. The boy backpedaled out of reach, and then turned and scuttered to the nearest corner a few steps away.
When he had gone down several hallways at random, moving more deliberately, no longer calling attention to himself by wild-eyed flight, he stopped and leaned against the curved wall. With an effort he controlled his panting breath. He wanted the casual passerby to notice nothing, not even the depth of each breath as he dragged it, karate-like, into the pit of his stomach, slowly and steadily, with the discipline of an opera star. Something more that he had learned on the October World.
He pretended that he was consulting his wrist computer, a common enough sight. He did not use the Cloak. The Adept would sniff it out, like a hound after a scent.
Reason it out, he told himself. Reason it out, master the flaw, pretend that you did not fail the Test. Bring your mind and body into your service, into your mastery, where they belong.
At length, as his mind began to quiet, he began to think with some rationality. He quieted his racing thoughts, his fear, with a wrenching effort of will.
Will. That was the key to everything, he thought. A powerful will could do almost anything with a body, a mind, a total human being. It could force athletic prowess through rigorous training, mental acumen through study and practice, and even skill in handling people.
A human being could, and would, if he had any intelligence at all, observe the most effective people around him, and by an effort of will, emulate them—practice their body language, use of words, dress, politeness, habits—until some of it became second nature, that part of it that eventually fitted oneself.
Only in the inevitable deterioration of age could a strong will fail, and even then the weakening could be slowed by deliberate attention to diet, exercise, discipline. And a will could itself be exercised and developed, until it could conquer indecision, fear, pain, in a way, even death itself.
His flaw had a lot to do with will. But he would conquer it now, here, this minute. He had to.
Or he would very likely die.
Where was the Adept this minute? On his trail? Perhaps just about to round the nearest corner?
He needed information, badly.
Within the molecular structure of his wrist computer was stored a good portion of all human knowledge, with the rest accessible by radio with the nearest database.
“Computer,” he mumbled. No one had yet figured out how to feed thought itself into a computer. A voice was needed, even if it were a mumble.
“What,” he asked the machine, “is the latest news bulletin from within the ship?”
“At thirteen standard days to Loblolly, your Social Director has a challenge,” the computer intoned. The voice itself seemed to come from everywhere, but no one else could have heard it. It came from an implant behind each ear just under the skin. Everyone had them; the computer spoke only to his own receivers now, conducting sound through the mastoid bone directly into the middle ear.
“Take your choice,” the computer said. “An exciting evening of music with the Pied Pipers on Deck C or, for chlorine breathers, the crystal show on Deck . . .”
“Stop,” Asher said, irritated. “All I’m interested in is news about the observation deck!”
Without hesitation, the computer said: “We’re sorry, but an electrical short has caused the closing of the Oh-Two observation deck for about twenty minutes. We invite you instead to view the stars from the Flamingo, the restaurant of the gods, with delicacies to delight all the senses . . .”
“Stop,” Asher almost shouted. “That’s it?” he demanded. “Nothing about Security after someone?”
“Nothing,” the computer said in its efficient, friendly way. All wrist computers were friendly, without being sickening about it—although there was some variation in the friendliness factor, as manufacturers struggled for different parts of the market. Asher’s computer was only moderately friendly. The October World did not go in for friendliness.
He was not a part of the news. The Adept was not, either. Perhaps they were both being sought by the ship’s police, but even as he thought it, he knew that it was unlikely. He had been, after all, screened by the Cloak of Unnotice, and it was very likely that the Adept had been, too. Perhaps many eyes had seen that incredible leap, but minds had not registered the act.
“Electrical short,” indeed. How the ship’s maintenance robots must have been punted by the melted chairs.
So it was likely that Security was aware that something suspicious had happened, but didn’t know what to make of it. And it was unlikely that the Pride of Caldott had its own Adept on board. Members of the Guild hired themselves out, of course; it was that kind of commerce that kept the Guild alive. But an Adept’s services were expensive, and the Guild’s main clients were planetary governments and large corporations on the trail of security leaks, as Asher had been told. Not enough ever happened on a passenger starship to bring its holding company to the point of employing traveling Adepts.
But an Adept was on the Caldott, looking for him, discreetly asking about an eighteen-year-old boy with brown hair and brown eyes and a sort of wild look.
The old man. His agitation would be instantly apparent to an Adept. “The hoodlum went in that direction,” the man would say. “I hope you catch the young . . .
Suddenly Asher shouldered off the wall and began to walk. An Adept could quiz any of the passersby, alien or human, with a minimum of words and a maximum of effect. Around the corner he might come any minute now, Asher thought. Any minute.
He tried to keep his eyes from darting nervously about. He was aware that in his flight, he had been heading instinctively toward his cabin by the shortest route, and he began moving in the same direction as rapidly as he could without calling undue attention to himself. The Adept would, of course, know where his little cabin was, at least if his purpose for being on board were to keep an eye on Asher Tye. And the man on his heels had not caught up with him yet, so the coast ahead was presumably clear. Probably Asher owed his life so far to the fact that the corridors were not well traveled at two in the afternoon, and that the route to his cabin involved many turns, cutting down on the likelihood that the Adept would meet passengers who were traveling Asher’s route in reverse.
As he hurried along, Asher’s mind dwelt on several unhappy thoughts. How, he wondered, could he avoid a full Adept for thirteen days, until planetfall on Loblolly? And then, how could he get off the ship without the Adept’s notice?
There was virtually nowhere to hide. There weren’t any broom closets or maintenance areas on a modern starship that were in any way accessible to him. Maintenance was performed by robots, whose quarters were airless and almost without heat. Empty cabins were sealed tightly against intruders, and none of Asher’s primitive Skill could penetrate their security without setting off alarms somewhere in the ship. He could not stay indefinitely in restaurants or entertainment nooks without attracting notice or using up his money, or both. Nor could he penetrate the areas of the ship reserved for chlorine- or methane- or water-breathers; with his oxygen-breather’s equipment, he’d stand out like a cat in a birdbath. And here, if he used the Cloak, he would be broadcasting his whereabouts to the Adept, rather than hiding from him.
Suppose he managed to avoid contact until planetfall. There were only two debarking gates for oxygen-breathers, alien and human. They were side-by-side and fed by a single corridor, to the shuttles that would take passengers from the orbiting starship to the planet below. Debarkation through the other sections—water, methane, or chlorine—was reserved for the appropriate life forms, without exception. And Loblolly, now that he recalled it, was a methane world. A sweeter trap could not be imagined.
Nor could he somehow steal a lifeboat. The starship had plenty of them, of course—enough to ensure the survival of all passengers and crew should some disaster befall the main ship itself.
But the boats were sealed away behind tightly closed security panels, and only electronic commands from the bridge, or the failure of gravitational, electrical, or life support systems, could release the boats to passenger access. Not only would an attempt to penetrate a lifeboat set off alarms in security areas all over the ship, but even if he made it inside and separated from the ship, there were only two possible destinations on the fuel the lifeboat would have.
One was the October World, where death or more thorough Erasure certainly awaited. The other was Loblolly, where the police would pick him up in orbit, and where the dark-haired Adept would inevitably find him and wipe him out. The Caldott, with its superior speed, would get to Loblolly well before its own lifeboat, and the Adept, perhaps with dozens to back him up, would be waiting.
But he had to try. He could not just roll over and say, “Here I am, take me!” He had to fight back, somehow, even though he might have no chance at all.
As he neared the cubicle, he told himself that he had maybe five minutes to grab his things and get out. The entire interior of the ship was dangerous to him, but no place was more dangerous than the tiny cabin. While he could not have penetrated a cabin’s security, a full Adept could with ease.
Should he throw himself at the mercy of the ship’s security police, Asher wondered suddenly, stopping for a moment to let a six-hundred-pound Tessorian slither past. For a moment he felt a wild surge of hope at having found an answer, but then he knew that it was no good. He himself could have befuddled a run-of-the mill security force with his Apprentice skills; an Adept could walk right through them as if invisible, which to them he would he.
The walls were now curved; his cabin was near the outer hull. It was just out of view now, maybe twenty yards away, down the corridor’s beige floor that was like hard rubber, with a door set into the pale yellow plas-steel wall.
He came up on it then, and looked nervously up and down the hallway. Back the way he came, a foot-tall Chiuliduc was rolling away from him, but the alien was no threat. The other way, there was no one.
Quickly he placed his palm on the plate next to the door, said the voice-printed access word, saw the door slide away. He took a single step inside, and.
He looked full into the face of the Adept.
In blind reaction, he leaped backward, or tried to. The door had unaccountably shut already, nearly taking his backside with it. He bumped into it, and threw a foot forward to catch himself: He slammed a hand onto the inside door plate, practically screaming the code.
Nothing happened.
Asher threw up his arms instinctively, palms. rigid, looking at the man, his mind blank with utter terror. The man stood tensely across the room from him, liquid dark eyes intent, looking fixedly at the door, hands ready at his sides. Asher screamed in his mind for the Green Flame. It did not come. The man was not moving . . .
Asher’s ears picked up a low buzz to his left, and involuntarily he darted a glance that way.
In the cubicle’s single chair, there sat a woman. The same woman who had talked his ear off on the observation deck, when his mind was still that of a boy. There was a smile on the puffy, matronly face. And next to her was her alien companion, sitting on the end table, ugly snout buzzing with . . .
Laughter? Frantically, he looked back at the Adept. The man was still there, not moving, not blinking. The Green Flame would not ignite. Asher tried again.
“No,” said the woman. Her voice was low, but carried an assurance with it. “It won’t come.”
“But . . .” Asher croaked. He tore his eyes away from the unmoving dark ones in front of him, toward the heavyset woman and her odd companion.
“He’s in a time of his own,” the woman said, humor in her voice, gesturing with one lazy arm toward the Adept. “He thinks only a microsecond has passed since he came here. You sure stirred up the Power when you came alive again. Lucky we were closer to your cabin than he was.”
“A Time Stop,” Asher breathed. He realized that his arms were still extended ridiculously, in their futile attempt to summon the Green Flame. He lowered them suddenly and looked back at the dark-eyed man.
“Aye, a Time Stop,” the woman said softly, eyeing Asher. The Digger stopped buzzing, and the room’s silence was almost a noise in itself.
“But he’s a full Adept—he must be,” Asher said lamely. He looked again at the pair to his left, and leaned weakly against the door. They were making no threatening moves. But caution was in him. He would have jumped into the corridor and run, if he could have, But they had done something to his door, and evidently to his Skill.
“So is Digger,” the woman said. “And so am I. The fool rushed in here to lay a trap. He didn’t think a trap would already be here. Although, I admit, the trap was not for him, but for you.”
The import of the last few words made no impression on Asher for a moment, as the thought struck him that he had been a fool, The Adept had not been dogging him, seeking him out through human and alien who might have passed him by. Instead, the man had run directly to his cabin, to lie in wait and blast Asher down when he came, as he inevitably would.
Maybe if I didn’t have the flaw, I might have foreseen that, Asher thought. I . . .
And then the final few words did hit him, and he gaped at the Digger and its fat companion.
The tableau held for a long moment.
Then he drew himself erect. If a single Adept could not stand against two, then an Apprentice who had failed the Test to become an Initiate would have no hope at all.
At length, the silence grew oppressive.
“Get it over with,” Asher said at last, his voice a painful ghost of itself.
“Get what over with?” the woman inquired with a sweetness that was terrible to Asher’s ears. The alien began to buzz again.
“You have to play with me?” Asher said shrilly. “That’s not the way I thought the Guild did its killing.”
“No doubt it’s not,” the woman said, making her form as languid as its bulkiness would allow. “But then, we are not Guild.” She threw back her head and laughed with a suddenness that made Asher jump. Asher wondered if she were unbalanced.
Asher rubbed a hand over his eyes. His mind kept reeling from one thing to another, He couldn’t keep things straight.
“But you said you’re Adepts,” he said weakly.
“Yes. But not of the Guild,” the woman said. “I was once, but not anymore. And the Digger never was.”
“Come off it!” Asher shouted. He was still convinced that he would not leave the cabin alive. “All Adepts are October Guild. By definition!” The Time Stop was a very difficult technique. In training Asher had practiced its close kin, the Death Trance, slowing his own body down to death-like quiet and then reawakening it. But it was one thing to order one’s own mind into such a state; it was quite another to impose it on someone else, and that someone an unwilling Adept. Skill of a high order was at work here. Asher wondered if it was the Digger, the woman, or both of them together. They had to be October!
“Digger, our young friend is so sure,” the woman said, laughing that same, overly loud laugh. “Must we disabuse him?” The Digger buzzed.
Asher sank to the floor then; he just didn’t think that his knees would hold him up anymore. The flaw, of course, was there, playing riot in his mind.
Across from him, the Adept glared balefully, lost in timelessness.
The woman’s voice came:
“You are not October Guild, not anymore. And you are an Adept.”
“I’m not,” Asher said. His voice was stammering; he tried to control it. “I’m not even an Initiate. I failed the Test.”
“So what?” the woman inquired. “You have many of the Skills, at least in their raw state. They didn’t give you the name, is all.”
When Asher did not respond, she said: “You’re not the only one, for Egel’s sake, and neither am I. I suppose you could call us Rogues; is that good enough for you?”