She said bluntly, "Could you have killed it?"
"No."
"Not even if you'd had your full strength? If you hadn't been hurt at the outset?" She added, "Using your knife, naturally."
He said, "You know the answer to that. The natural defenses are too high. To stab and slash takes time and the wounds would be relatively minor."
"But if your life depended on it?"
He would do his best but too much could happen; a slip, the flick of blood into his eyes, sweat easing his grip, the rake of a claw, the shift of the wind, the glare of reflected sunlight. Never could he be certain of winning. No man could ever be that.
"Earl?"
She was insistent and he wondered why. Wondered too what she could have learned while he was being treated. While under slowtime nothing could have been gained but at the end, or if he had been returned to normal time for a few hours, he would have been vulnerable. Drugs, hypnotism, electronic probing. He remembered the dreams, the stimulated memories, the result of distorted senses. The result of applied instruction? And why the terminal wave of pain?
She shrugged when he asked. "A means to restore full awareness. It was created by direct cortical stimulation and caused no cellular damage. Now, Earl, please answer my question."
"I can't." He was bluntly honest. "How the hell can I? You're asking me to predict a certainty and only God can do that."
"Or the Cyclan?" She smiled as he made no answer. "We're bickering again, Earl, and without need. Like young lovers so tensed with emotion they explode at a word. It's my fault. I should have remembered you have just awakened from treatment. But think of it, Earl. You matched against a mannek. The odds against your winning would be astronomical. With skilled management you could make a fortune."
The glittering prospect had lured too many to their death and he wondered why she had mentioned it. And why mention the Cyclan? Coincidence, perhaps, but Dumarest distrusted coincidences and had long learned the error of taking things at their apparent value. The woman could be what she claimed or she could be that and more.
She looked up as he rose, the clean lines of her throat a column of perfection, the gems in her hair winking, moving, sparkling, drifting among the ebon tresses like a host of watching eyes. Tiny orbs held his own as she too rose, to step toward him, to fill his nostrils with her scent before stepping to where a mass of cut and shaped crystal stood in an elaborate form on a small table to one side of the salon.
"A toy, Earl, let me show it to you."
"Thank you, Charisse, but I haven't the time. I've things to do, a passage to arrange, you understand."
"Of course." She disarmed him with her agreement. "But there are no ships just yet. In a few days the Ophir is due and the Kevore shortly afterward. They come to pick up any remaining students. You could book passage on either."
"And you?"
"I'm waiting to transship the mannek. After that I return to the laboratories on Kuldip." She lifted a hand toward the crystal. "Now let me show you my toy."
It came alive beneath her hand, light winking, fading to flare again in a kaleidoscope of shifting points, burning, transient brilliance, accompanied by a musical chiming, a brittle tintinnabulation which filled the chamber and echoed to ring again in new and more complex patterns. Light and sound. Brilliance and tinklings. Form and movement and a vague disquiet.
The unease was quashed as Charisse came to him to throw back her head and smile into his eyes with her hair alive with scintillations.
Dumarest smelled her perfume. Felt the blood pound in his veins. Felt the age-old urge dictated by nature-the force designed to perpetuate the species. Tasted blood as his teeth dug into the soft inner flesh of his cheek.
"Here, Earl." Her voice was soft as she handed him more wine. Bubbles rose in glowing emerald to burst, to be renewed, to die in eye-catching sparkles. "Drink it, my darling. It will do you good. Give you strength and help you to relax." Then, as he hesitated, "You almost died, Earl. You would have died had it not been for me. Trust me, my darling. Drink the wine. Drink."
Drink and add to the drugs already circulating in his system. The compounds which could have been added to the nutrients fed into his veins. Yet to be cautious now was to be wary too late. If this were a trap he was snared. If it were to be sprung he had no escape. Her guards, while unseen, would be close.
"Earl?" She was insistent. "Drink, Earl. Drink!"
Light and music. Shine and glitter and the sweet, brittle tinkling of endlessly ringing crystal. The perfume assailed his senses and turned his yearning into an impatient fire.
Pheromones, chemical messengers emitted by her glands to trigger his masculine response. An aphrodisiac against which there was no defense. A demand impossible for him to resist.
"You want me, my darling," she whispered. "You burn with need. Hold me, Earl. Hold me!"
Hold and feel the warmth, the softness and comfort which came from the union of parts, the completeness, the merging. To yield to the prime dictate built into the basic fabric of his being; the survival urge which overrode all else.
To mate. To die while mating-but to mate! The compulsion to procreate in which the individual was nothing more than the carrier of the precious and selfish genes; seed to be sown in a blaze of physical heat and a desire which rose to a crescendo, obliterating all caution, all restraint. A need which turned Dumarest into a rutting beast rewarding him with the intoxication of ecstasy.
In a small room which had once known exotic delights Cyber Okos experienced an intoxication of a different kind. It was always the same after rapport had been broken with the massed brains of central intelligence and the engrafted Homochon elements within his skull sank back into normal quiescence. A time in which the machinery of his body began to realign itself with mental control while he drifted in a dark void sensing strange memories and new concepts, scraps of data, novel outlooks. The overflow from other, distant intelligences. Intriguing glimpses of other worlds which he would never see but which were as real as any he had known.
A familiar experience-Okos had long been a servant of the Cyclan, but this time there had been something new.
Lying supine he thought about it. A fragment which had become implanted on his brain during the moment when central intelligence had assimilated his data as if it had been water sucked by a sponge. Near instantaneous communication against which the speed of light was a crawl gave the Cyclan a part of the power it possessed. Data given and instructions received-but this time there had been that little extra.
A mistake? The concept alone was disturbing for central intelligence was above such mundane error or it was no better than a flawed machine. Deliberate, then, but why? Why should he have been selected to be given that fragment of data?
This was an illogical thought and immediately he corrected the error. He had no proof that others had not been given the information and yet the probability against it was, had to be, in the order of ninety-nine percent-a prediction as close to absolute certainty as he dared to make. So, working on the assumption that he had been favored, the question remained.
Why?
Opening his eyes, Okos stared up at the reflection in the mirrored ceiling. Lying on the bed he looked a corpse dressed in the scarlet of his robe, the shaven head framed by the cowl, gaunt, smooth, skull-like, only the deep-set eyes revealing life and intelligence. A man dedicated to an organization whose seal was blazoned on the breast of the garment he wore. A living, breathing, emotionless machine. One with the ability to take a handful of facts and from them extrapolate a whole. Of taking a situation and predicting the logical outcome of any course of action. Now, looking at his reflection, he assessed what he had just learned.