Star Bridge Part 15

"We can't stand on ceremony," Wu said. "You can trust Horn. Like us, he is dead if he falls in Duchane's hands. Besides- Ah, well. Get in."

Horn caught Wu's quick glance and understood. The wily, old man didn't entirely trust Wendre. Or, perhaps, he did not trust her impulses. Once alone, she might decide to try something else on her own. Surprisingly, Horn trusted her, without reason, and he was a man who had trusted no one.

Wendre had appealed to Horn as no woman ever had. She had a man's mind and a woman's heart. She was self-reliant, proud, courageous. She grasped the situation quickly, accepted the odds, and did what had to be done without complaining. This was no spoiled child of empire, no sheltered darling of an all-powerful father; this was a woman fit to stand and fight beside any barbarian from the restless marches, made for love and ready to battle for it.

Horn grimaced, and told himself to stop thinking about her. He was probably reading more into her character than was there. In any case, it was hopeless folly. Even if she was capable of great love, it couldn't be for him. He was not only a barbarian; he had killed her father.

Wendre was looking at him curiously. "All right," she said.

Horn climbed into the car, sank into the seat, and fastened the belt around his legs. He motioned for Wendre to sit on his lap. She hesitated, but it was obviously the best arrangement. She sat down stiffly, warily. Horn reached out for the door handle.

"The north cap," he said to Wu.

"I'll follow immediately," Wu a.s.sured him.

As the doors closed, Horn slipped an arm around Wendre's slim waist and reached for the upper white disk to the left. The car fell from under them. In the darkness, the arm tightened around Wendre's waist. The touch made Horn cold; he couldn't control a s.h.i.+ver.

"Did you find the prospect of riding with me distasteful?" Wendre asked suddenly.

So Wendre had seen the face he had made. "Not at all. A private thought."

"I see. You don't have to hold me so tight," Wendre said curtly.

"Your pardon, Director." Horn started to withdraw his arm.

Wendre floated upward, weightless. Quickly Horn pulled her back. This time, when he held her close, she didn't object.

Only the single red eye of the emergency disk relieved the darkness. Slowly Wendre relaxed.

"I can't believe that my steward would betray me," she said finally. "He was more than a servant; he was a friend."

"When the world is rotten," Horn said, "it needs a strong man to resist corruption."

"Like you?" Wendre asked scornfully.

"No," Horn answered. "Not like me."

"Rotten?" Wendre repeated. "Eron?"

"When a race stops fighting its own battles, it begins to die," Horn said. "Where are your learners, your doers, your workers, your fighters? You won't find them among the Golden Folk. There you will find effeminate dandies with padded bosoms and shapely legs, concerned only with their eternal search for pleasure and relief from boredom. It leads them to such places as the one we just left. There you will find back-stabbers and traitors. Where can you find a man you can trust to act for Eron first and himself second?"

"I don't know," Wendre said. And then, quickly, "My father was such a man."

"Garth Kohlnar was Eron. What he did for Eron he did for himself. He was a strong man and wise enough to realize that beyond power itself is the power of using it wisely."

"That's true," Wendre said.

"But not wise enough to see that he was preserving a fossil."

"That fossil defeated the Cl.u.s.ter!" Wendre snapped.

"Even a fossil can be dangerous if it is as big as Eron. But the interesting question is: why did Eron attack?"

"The Cl.u.s.ter was a constant threat, a-"

"The nearest outpost of the Empire was ten light years away. What threat was that? Eron itself was almost three hundred light years from the Cl.u.s.ter. Where was the danger to Eron? The only threat was the insidious propaganda that there was freedom in the galaxy, that outside the Empire was a vigorous new civilization where men were free. The only danger was internal: rebellion."

"The Empire is greater than it has ever been. How can it be rotten? I haven't seen any of these things-"

"You haven't been down to the lower levels and seen them there," Horn said, "the brute animals who shuffle from birth to death in the eternal twilight, never having seen a star. You've never seen the food plantations on the conquered worlds, where Eron's food is grown by slaves lashed on by overseers. You didn't see the ravaged worlds of the Cl.u.s.ter, the slaughtered billions, the shattered cities, the starving survivors-"

"I saw that," Wendre said quietly.

"For slaves there is only a thin line between life and death. Give them hope, give them the faintest glimpse of a star, and they will explode like a nova into all-destroying violence."

"And leave interstellar civilization in ruins. Is that preferable to empire?"

"Perhaps. To slaves. And yet it doesn't have to happen. One man could control them. One man could save civilization from total destruction."

"Who?"

"The Liberator."

"Peter Sair? But he's dead."

"So I've heard. If it's true, it's humanity's loss."

"I wish I were a man," Wendre said fiercely. Under his hand, Horn could feel her waist move as she breathed quickly. "I could save the Empire and make it a better thing. It doesn't have to be like this. I tried to tell Garth- But he laughed."

"Perhaps Duchane was right," Horn said.

"How!" She stiffened.

"That you didn't love your father."

Wendre relaxed a little. "In that, perhaps. I respected him but we weren't close. There were reasons. Some of them Duchane mentioned; some of them he could never guess. I should have been born a man. I've always wished that."

"Hasn't anyone ever made you glad you weren't?" Horn asked.

"What do you mean?"

"Like this." His right hand reached up and pulled her down against him. In the darkness, his lips sought hers and found them, and they were soft and curious and sweet. Horn's breath came fast. His mind whirled. Into it, like a dark intruder, crept a chilling thought. If only Wendre and her father knew about the Dedication at the time he was hired, Wendre had to be the one who had hired him- Horn's stomach turned over. His lips stiffened. He pulled away.

After a moment, Wendre said, "Why did you do that?"

"Do what?" Horn asked harshly.

"Draw back?"

"Maybe I suddenly remembered," Horn said, "that you are a Director, and I'm a guard. Aren't you angry?"

"I should be, shouldn't I?" Wendre said wonderingly. "There's something strange about you. I don't think of you as a guard. I keep feeling that we've met before, that I've talked to you in the darkness, like this- But it's impossible. We've never met-"

"You're revealing a maiden's secrets," Horn said harshly.

Wendre sat up straight. "Perhaps I am," she said distantly.

The car jolted to a stop. The door swung open. Outside was the circular room Horn had left less than twenty-four hours ago.

"There's a lot to do," Horn said, "and not much time to do it in."

Wendre's face was puzzled and thoughtful as she stood beside him facing the closed cylinder door. Seconds later it opened. Wu stepped out of a car. His face was still Matal. "Lead the way, my dear," he said to Wendre.

Slowly the girl turned and walked to one wall. A panel opened toward her as she touched it. Memorizing the spot was automatic with Horn. The little room behind the panel was an elevator. They crowded into it. Horn stood at the back of the car, frowning.

Why had he doubted Wendre suddenly? Why had nausea swept over him as they were kissing and the meaning of what she had told him become clear? Could it have been his own guilt that had pulled him back? He had killed her father. It was very possible that he had rationalized his guilt as hers. There was no real reason to suspect her.

Horn realized that his guilt was like a weight on his shoulders. It had been there for a long time. It would be a relief to get rid of it, to confess. But there was only one person he could confess to: Wendre. And when she knew she would turn away or- Horn blinked as the light returned brilliantly. They stepped out of the elevator into a vast circular room, many times the diameter of the room below. Colored spots of light danced and flickered in intricate and meaningless patterns across the distant walls. Chairs and panels circled the walls and made concentric, narrowing circles inside them. Switches, cameras, pickups, communicators....

The room was deserted. The chairs were empty. One ten-meter section of the wall was dark.

Wendre gasped. "Where are the technicians? There's always a full crew on duty."

The room had two wide doors, opposite each other. They were both closed. In the center of the room was a large, gray-walled boxlike structure. Horn circled it cautiously. Wu followed him. Behind it, they found the first body. It was dressed in gold; the bloodstains didn't quite hide the technician's ensignia.

There were other bodies scattered among the chairs and panels. Some were dressed in orange, some in green, but most of them wore gold. A black pool seeped under one of the doors. Wu opened it. Behind it the bodies were piled thick. Green, orange, gold-and black. Technicians and security guards. All of them were dead.

"The first a.s.sault was thrown back," Wu said. "The technicians that survived followed up their advantage. But we haven't got much time. There will be other attacks."

When they turned, there was a door in the gray box. It stood open. It was at least thirty centimeters thick. That was thicker than the heaviest s.h.i.+p plate. Wendre stood beside the door, waiting for them. Horn stopped and looked inside the vault. Set into one wall was a large switch. It was without any distinction, a completely ordinary switch. It was closed.

"That's it," Wendre said. "The master switch. Do we have to open it?" She looked at Horn and then at Wu. "It hasn't been touched since the first Tube was set up."

"How can you be sure?" Horn asked.

"Only the Directors can open this vault."

"How else can we isolate Eron?" Wu asked. "How else can we defeat Duchane?"

"What's the use of talking?" Horn said impatiently. "I'll do it."

He took two steps into the vault and pulled the switch open with an easy sweep of his arm. "There," he said. "That's done." It was a moment of unparalleled power.

Wendre laughed mockingly. She pointed to the walls. The spots of color flickered unchecked across them.

"It didn't work," Horn said.

"Of course not," Wendre said scornfully. "If anyone could do it, Eron would have been destroyed centuries ago. A Director must be present to activate a new Tube, and a Director must cut them off. To be eligible for the position of Director, a person must be of pure golden blood. You've probably scoffed at the Great Mutation, but it has kept the secret of the Tubes for a thousand years."

She sighed. "If it must be done, let me do it."

She pushed the switch back into place, hesitated, and pulled it down, her face frozen, her eyes distant. Horn turned to look at the walls. When he heard her gasp behind him, he knew that she had seen. The walls hadn't changed.

"Should they be dark?" he asked quietly.

"Yes," Wendre whispered. "I can't understand- It's-" She stopped. There were no words to express the terrible disillusion of that moment.

"A fake," Wu said. "A dummy."

Horn slipped an arm around Wendre's shoulder and led her out of the vault. She leaned against Horn's chest, accepting the comfort automatically. "All false, then," she said. "Everything I was told. Everything I believed."

"A wise man," Wu said softly, "never believes anything completely until he has tested it for himself."

"There must be truth somewhere among the lies," Horn said. "The Tubes are real."

"Maybe they're an illusion, too," Wendre said wildly, "and the Empire is an illusion, and we're an illusion, and-"

She was shaking violently. Horn drew her in tight and held her. "Stop it, Wendre," he said softly. "Stop." He didn't notice that he had spoken to her with the familiarity of an equal; neither did she, or she didn't care. "There's a secret; someone must have it. Who? Think, Wendre! Think!"

She stopped shaking. Her head lifted; she looked into his intent face. "That's right," she said softly. "Someone must have it."

"Who?" Horn repeated. "New Tubes have been activated ever since this switch was installed. The secret couldn't have been lost."

"Men all over the galaxy have tried to find it," Wu said. "They had all the technical information available to Eron. They always failed. They couldn't activate the Tube. The secret always eluded them."

"At the Dedication," Horn said, his eyes distant, remembering, "there were six of you on the platform: Duchane, Matal, you, your father, Fenelon, and Ronholm. You all touched the switch. It must have been one of you."

"Unless that was a sham, too," Wendre said.

"It couldn't be anyone else," Horn said. "The secret couldn't pa.s.s through the hands of any other group for a thousand years without being discovered by the Directors."

"We were all there," Wendre agreed, "but that wasn't significant. We've been at other activations one at a time." She shook her head bewilderedly. "It couldn't have been Father. He would have told me. Or someone. Something as precious as that you can't take chances with. One other person should have known in case of accidental death. For safety, it should have been all of us."

"Perhaps he only trusted one other person," Horn said.

"It should have been me."

"But you didn't love him."

"He loved me. He made me a Director."

"Who else could he have trusted?" Horn asked.

Wendre shook her head again. "Not Duchane; he knew his ambition. Not Ronholm. Father wanted us to marry, but he thought he was too young yet, too hot-headed. Fenelon? Perhaps. Or you." She turned to Wu. "You had the longest service, next to Father."

The Matal-face looked discouraged. "Not me. And if it was Fenelon or Ronholm, I'm afraid the secret is lost. That gunfire when we left Duchane's sounded like their requiem."

"Look! Could it have been Duchane?" Horn asked. "He seemed so confident. Your father was ambitious once; he might have understood that in Duchane."