"The olcept?"
"Dead." Dumarest added, casually, "You killed it."
"I killed it?" The boy echoed his incredulity. "But how? The gun? Did I shoot it?"
"No. You missed each time."
"The light was bad and it came so fast there was no time to aim. I remember it coming for me and then there was a blow and I saw stars and… and… ?" He frowned, trying to remember. "My foot twisted under me. I remember that. Then-I killed it, you say?"
"Yes."
"But how, Earl? How?"
Dumarest lifted a canteen wet a cloth and held it to the injured temple. The raft hovered thirty feet above the ground and a dozen from the edge of the promontory where the beast had fallen. It was late, the stars bright in the sky, the air still with a sleeping hush.
"Earl?"
"Lie back and relax. Just do as I say." As the boy obeyed Dumarest switched on a flashlight and, in the reflected light of the beam, lifted each eyelid in turn and studied the whites of the boy's eyes. They were clear of bloodclots and the bone at the temple was unbroken. "You were lucky, Navalok. No real damage and nothing but a minor concussion. Can't you remember what happened?"
"Only that I was hit, Earl and that I fell."
"Then you managed to get to your feet again and-" Dumarest broke off, shaking his head. "Are you certain you can't remember killing the olcept?"
"Did I?"
For answer Dumarest lifted the tunic he had removed from the unconscious youth. It was smeared and stained with blood. More blood marked the hands, resting in the quick of the nails, lying thickly on the boots. Traces he had purposely made.
Frowning the boy shook his head. "Earl, I-"
"You were hurt and probably dazed," said Dumarest quickly. "But I had no time to worry about that. The thing came for me after you'd been hit and I had to run. When I turned you had a spear and were moving in to the attack. I yelled out, but you didn't answer, and the next thing I knew you were stabbing at the beast. You got it in the guts and then, as it reared, you managed to get the point under the chin. The shaft snapped then and the olcept charged. It was dying and must have been desperate. Anyway, it went over the edge. You'd collapsed and, at first, I thought you were dead. I guess we were both lucky."
"And you carried me into the raft and lifted?"
"Yes, there could have been others." That, at least, was no lie. "I washed you down as best I could and made you comfortable. You were breathing so all I could do was to wait."
Wait and whisper in the unconscious boy's ear, his voice directed at the subconscious, implanting the suggestion of false memories and bolstering the story he had just been given. Words spoken and reinforced as the lad had turned and muttered prior to waking.
A lie which had given him the proof of manhood he craved.
"You've won your trophy," said Dumarest. "When it's light we'll collect the head. Now I want to get back to the cave."
Nothing had changed. Outside there had been blood and death, pain and violence, but within the chamber silence still held sway and the ghosts of the past thronged close as if to whisper their message.
Dumarest stood at the foot of the dirt blocking the opening, the beam of the flashlight bright as it impacted against the rayed disc of the depicted sun. A symbol which he was certain held more than it seemed.
For a long moment he studied it, hearing the small sounds from outside where Navalok, in the raft, washed the blood from his clothes and body. Happy sounds, the boy was vibrant at his gain, the trophy, the gun he could now wear with authority, the place which soon would be his as a leader of the Family. A happiness Dumarest had given; one he wished he could share.
The sun.
Guardians of the Sun.
The message, if there was one, had to be connected with the symbol dominating the chamber. Again he stepped close to it, seeing the play of light over the surface, the interplay of shimmering colors as the beam was refracted from the grating.
A code? Tiny dots formed to spell out words? An equation of some kind? A set of coordinates? A recording hidden somehow in the disc itself?
Fallen stone lay heaped at the foot of the debris. Dumarest gathered it, formed a pile, mounted to its summit and found his hands still inches below the disc. Heightening the pile he rested the flashlight in the dirt so the beam shone full on the disc, his shadow occluding the light as he climbed. The thing was thick, heavy, held firm against the wall. Lifting the knife from his boot he thrust the point beneath the lower edge and heaved. The tempered blade bent a little but he thought he detected a trace of movement. Lifting the steel he jerked at the side of the disc, felt a resistance, jerked again and went tumbling backwards as, suddenly, like a door the rayed orb swung towards him.
The back was hollowed, ringed with a series of patterns, dots arranged as were the artificial stars. In the centre, held by clips, rested an oblong strip of plastic.
It sprang free as Dumarest tugged at it and he examined it as he stood on the floor of the chamber. An almost opaque strip of material bearing nothing in the way of figures or words. He held it before his eyes and saw only a murky coloration. A scrap of plastic without any possible intrinsic value yet it had been kept in the most sacred place of this shrine.
An object of veneration-but what?
The reflected light was dim and he looked at it again as he held it before the lens of the flashlight. In the bright illumination the colors became clear, a swathe stretching from red to violet marked with dark lines of varying intensity.
A spectrum?
Dumarest turned the flashlight, his hands quivering a little, conscious of the sudden acceleration of his heart. Placing the strip over the lens he shone the beam on the floor. An adjustment and he corrected the focus a little, not much and the pattern shown was far short of that thrown by a projector, but it was clear enough for him to be certain as to what he had found.
The plastic held the spectroscopic record of a source of illumination and that source could only be a star.
It had to be a star.
A sun.
Each had its own spectrogram and no two were alike. As a thumbprint would identify one man from millions so a spectrogram would identify one star from those that thronged the galaxy. And this pattern, he had no doubt, belonged to the sun which had warmed him as a child.
Sol.
Earth's primary.
He held the clue which could guide him back home.
Chapter Fifteen
There were nooks in the House, small places set in secluded ways, some graced with delicate carvings, others the repository of lichens and vagrant beams of light which threw soft illumination over stone and bench and the worn flags of the floor. The roof too was a series of flat spaces, some edged with crenelations, others flanked with high walls so that for most of the day they were filled with shadow.
Places which were the favorite rendezvous of lovers and to which Dephine was no stranger.
"Look, Earl." She pulled at his arm and led him across worn stone to where a buttress made a private spot in the corner of a scented garden. Massed in pots a profusion of herbs made an enticing aroma, their fronds hanging down over the walls and trailing on the ground. "I used to come here often as a child. There was a bench and I used to sit and scratch at the wall. See?"
The bench had gone but the scratches remained; thin lines drawn with a childish hand; a crude picture of a bearded man, a stylized vessel of space, a verse which held within its stanzas an empty yearning.
"Even then I wanted to get away," she murmured. "To escape. The House was like a cage and I was a bird pining to be free. Well, I did get free-and found the entire galaxy was nothing but a larger cage. Can freedom really exist, Earl? Is there any world on which a person can stand and be subjected to no restraint devised by man? Is there no place devoid of the power of those who are consumed with the desire to rule?"