Fanaticism smoldered in Varris’ eyes, but he answered quietly: «I was the legitimately chosen dictator. Under Caldonian law, I was within my rights. It was the Patrol which engineered the revolution. It’s the Patrol which now maintains a hated colonialism over my planet.»
«Yes—until such time as those hellhounds you call people have had a little sense beaten into them. If you hadn’t been stopped, there’d be more than one totally dead world by now.» Alak’s smile was wintry. «You’ll comprehend that for yourself, once we’ve normalized your psyche.»
«You can’t cleanly execute a man.» Varris paced tiger-fashion. «You have to take and twist him till everything that was holy to him has become evil and everything he despised is good. I’ll not let that happen to me.»
«You’re stuck here,» said Alak. «I know your boat is almost out of fuel. Incidentally, in case you get ideas, mine is quite thoroughly booby trapped. All I need do is holler for reinforcements. Why not surrender now and save me the trouble?»
Varris grinned. «Nice try, friend, but I’m not that stupid. If the Patrol could have sent more than you to arrest me, It would have done so. I’m staying here and gambling that a rescue party from Caldon will arrive before your ships get around to it. The odds are in my favor.»
His finger stabbed out. «Look here! By choice, I’d have my men cut you down where you stand—you and that slimy little monster. I can’t, because I have to live up to the local code of honor; they’d throw me out if I broke the least of their silly laws. But I can maintain a large enough bodyguard to prevent you from kidnapping me, as you’ve doubtless thought of doing.»
«I had given the matter some small consideration,» nodded Alak.
«There’s one other thing I can do, too. I can fight a duel with you. A duel to the death—they haven’t any other kind.»
«Well, I’m a pretty good shot.»
«They won’t allow modern weapons. The challenged party has the choice, but it’s got to be swords or axes or bows or something provided for in their law.» Varris laughed. «I’ve spent a lot of time this past year, practicing with just such arms. And I went in for fencing at home. How much training have you had?»
Alak shrugged. Not being even faintly a romantic, he had never taken much interest in archaic sports.
«I’m good at thinking up nasty tricks,» he said. «Suppose I chose to fight you with clubs, only I had a switchblade concealed in mine.»
«I’ve seen that kind of thing pulled,» said Varris calmly. «Poison is illegal, but gimmicks of the kind you mention are accepted. However, the weapons must be identical. You’d have to get me with your switchblade the first try—and I don’t think you could—or I’d see what was going on and do the same. I assure you, the prospect doesn’t frighten me at all.
«I’ll give you a few days here to see how hopeless your problem is. If you turn your flitter’s guns on the city, or on me… well, I have guns, too. If you aren’t out of the kingdom in a week—or if you begin to act suspiciously before that time—I’ll duel you.»
«I’m a peaceable man,» said Alak. «It takes two to make a duel.»
«Not here, it doesn’t. If I insult you before witnesses, and you don’t challenge me, you lose knightly rank and are whipped out of the country. It’s a long walk to the border, with a bull whip lashing you all the way. You wouldn’t make it alive.»
«All right,» sighed Alak. «What do you want of me?»
«I want to be let alone.»
«So do the people you were going to make war on last year.»
«Good night.» Varris turned and went out the door. His men followed him.
Alak stood for a while in silence. Beyond the walls, he could hear the night wind of Ryfin’s Planet. Somehow, it was a foreign wind, it had another sound from the rushing air of Terra. Blowing through different trees, across an unearthly land—
«Have you any plan at all?» murmured Drogs.
«I had one.» Alak clasped nervous hands behind his back.
«He doesn’t know I won’t bushwhack him, or summon a force of gunners, or something lethal like that. I was figuring on a bluff—but it seems he has called me. He wants to be sure of taking at least one Patrolman to hell with him.»
«You could study the local code duello,» suggested Drogs. «You could let him kill you in a way which looked like a technical foul. Then the king would boot him out and I could arrest him with the help of a stun beam.»
«Thanks,» said Alak. «Your devotion to duty is really touching.»
«I remember a Terran proverb,» said Drogs. Galmathian humor can be quite heavy at times. «‘The craven dies a thousand deaths, the hero dies but once.’»
«Yeh. But you see, I’m a craven from way back. I much prefer a thousand synthetic deaths to one genuine case. As far as I’m concerned, the live coward has it all over the dead hero—» Alak stopped. His jaw fell down and then snapped up again. He flopped into a chair and cocked his feet up on the windowsill and ran a hand through his ruddy hair.
Drogs returned to the water pipe and smoked imperturbably. He knew the signs. If the Patrol may not kill, it is allowed to do anything else—and sublimated murder can be most fascinatingly fiendish.
In spite of his claims to ambassadorial rank, Alak found himself rating low—his only retinue was one ugly nonhumanoid. But that could be useful. With their faintly contemptuous indifference, the nobles of Wainabog didn’t care where he was.
He went, the next afternoon, to Grimmoch Abbey.
An audience with Gulmanan was quickly granted. Alak crossed a paved courtyard, strolled by a temple where the hooded monks were holding an oddly impressive service and entered a room in the great central tower. It was a large room, furnished with austere design but lavish materials—gold and silver and gems and brocades. One wall was covered by bookshelves, illuminated folios, many of them secular. The abbot sat stiffly on a carved throne of rare woods. Alak made the required prostration and was invited to sit down.
The old eyes were thoughtful, watching him. «What brought you here, my cub?»
«I am a stranger, holy one,» said the human. «I understand little of your faith, and considered it shame that I did not know more.»
«We have not yet brought any outworlder to the Way,» said the abbot gravely. «Except, of course, Sir Varris, and I am afraid his devotions smack more of expediency than conviction.»
«Let me at least hear what you believe,» asked the Patrolman with all the earnestness he could summon in daylight.
Gulmanan smiled, creasing his gaunt blue face. «I have a suspicion that you are not merely seeking the Way,» he replied. «Belike there is some more temporal question in your mind.»
«Well—» They exchanged grins. You couldn’t run a corporation as big as this abbey without considerable hardheadedness.
Nevertheless, Alak persisted in his queries. It took an hour to learn what he wanted to know.
Thunsba was monotheistic. The theology was subtle and complex, the ritual emotionally satisfying, the commandments flexible enough to accommodate ordinary fleshly weaknesses. Nobody doubted the essential truth of the religion; but its Temple was another matter.
As in medieval Europe, the church was a powerful organization, international, the guardian of learning and the gradual civilizer of a barbarous race. It had no secular clergy—every priest was a monk of some degree, inhabiting a large or small monastery. Each of these was ruled by one officer—Gulmanan in this case—responsible to the central Council in Augnachar city; but distances being great and communications slow, this supreme authority was mostly background.
The clergy were celibate and utterly divorced from the civil regime, with their own laws and courts and punishments. Each detail of their lives, down to dress and diet, was minutely prescribed by an unbreakable code—there were no special dispensations. Entering the church, if you were approved, was only a matter of taking vows; getting out was not so easy, requiring a Council decree. A monk owned nothing; any property he might have had before entering reverted to his heirs, any marriage he might have made was automatically annulled. Even Gulmanan could not call the clothes he wore or the lands he ruled his own: it all belonged to the corporation, the abbey. And the abbey was rich; for centuries, titled Thunsbans had given it land or money.