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  "Fast," he said. "See?"

  "What are you trying to tell me?"

  "When you decide to act don't hesitate. That's the mistake you made out there. Don't waste time in talk. Attack, do it fast and don't be gentle. A hurt man can hit back, a dead one can't. Now hit me with your club." Dumarest shook his head as Angado lifted the weapon, his own reaching out to jab hard against the other's chest. "Not like that. It leaves you too open. Thrust as I did."

  Angado was slow. Dumarest swept aside the club and jabbed again. The next attack was faster, the club circling to avoid the parry. Dumarest knocked it far to the opposite side, jabbed, stood waiting.

  "Earl, I-"

  "Don't talk! Act! Kill me before I kill you! Move, damn you! Move!"

  Hard practice within the body of the church, sweating inside the hampering robes, learning how to compensate for the heavy material. As they moved the axe fell from Angado's belt, Dumarest picking it up and thrusting it beneath his robe. Finally he called a halt.

  "That's enough. We'll rest for a while."

  "Do you think I've improved?"

  "You're better." Angado was still slow but had lost his initial hesitation. Dumarest said, "You killed a man tonight. Was he your first?"

  "There was another. We had an argument and he came for me. It was an accident, really, he had a gun and I grabbed at it and it went off and shot him in the chest. A laser. The stink of burned flesh stuck in my nose for days." Angado paused then said, "I suppose you find killing easy."

  "No," said Dumarest. "It's never that."

  "But you intend to kill again."

  "You've left me no choice-I told you why. Gengiz has to dispose of us as a matter of pride. He's got a good thing going here and others know it. Once he shows weakness they'll try to take over. So we have to go. As we can't avoid it we have to meet it. Pick our own time and place."

  "But why the robes?"

  Dumarest shrugged, "It gives us an edge-who's afraid of a monk?"

  They rested, dozing, waiting for the dawn. The best time to attack when the guards would be sleepy and Gengiz unaware. In the infirmary Brother Kollar kept vigil over the sick, two of the other monks sleeping, the third standing awake in case of need. Dumarest started fully alert as a hand touched his shoulder. In the dim light he saw the strained face of Brother Galpin.

  "Something is wrong," whispered the monk. "There are people outside."

  "Suppliants?"

  "No. I think they intend to rob us."

  Thieves working under Gengiz or others eager to seize an opportunity. The dead thugs, untouched where they lay, no longer served to keep the vultures at bay.

  Dumarest rose, stretched, looked at the translucent roof of the church. The stars, paling, had left a blurred glow and he sensed it must be close to dawn. Others knew the best time to attack.

  They could be heard working at the wall to one side. A rasp of metal against the stubborn plastic the sound like the ugly grating of teeth. Dumarest crossed to it, knelt, listened, looked to the other side.

  Angado said, "Wouldn't they break directly into the storeroom?"

  "If they knew just where it was," agreed Dumarest. "Or if that's all they wanted."

  "You think they're after us?"

  "Gengiz knows we're in here. We killed his men. Now he has the chance to kill us and wreck the church at the same time. If monks die we'll be blamed. Either way he can't lose."

  "The church eliminated and used us as an example of what happens if anyone steps out of line." Angado drew in his breath. "We shouldn't be here, Earl. Nor wearing these robes. The monks don't deserve this."

  "If you're tired of life just strip and walk outside." Dumarest was curt. "If you're not just shut up and listen."

  The grating had grown louder, a sound impossible to miss and one sure to attract attention. Dumarest moved to the far wall where, dimly, he could see the vague outline of shadows.

  "Here," he whispered to Angado. "They're coming through here. Remember what I told you."

  "Are you going to attack without warning?"

  "I thought you'd learned."

  "Sorry. I wasn't thinking."

  "Don't think," advised Dumarest. "Just act. Hit hard and fast." He shifted the grip on his club. "Here they come!"

  The wall opened like a flower, petals of plastic parting to reveal a cluster of shapes, men who ran forward, metal glinting in their hands.

  The first went down, choking, vomiting from savage thrusts to throat and stomach. Others followed them as the clubs whined through the air to land on shoulders, backs, skulls. Victims of a ferocious and totally unexpected defense. Monks did not fight, yet monks seemed to be everywhere; in the dark interior of the church only the robed figures could be seen.

  Calm followed the violence, a period that Dumarest knew would be followed by a more calculated attack. One which, surprise now lost, would give numbers the advantage.

  He blinked as a vivid beam of light streamed from outside to illuminate the scene.

  It came from where Gengiz stood at a distance from the structure, a powerful flashlight in one hand, a laser in the other. The pale light of dawn gave him a somber appearance, accentuated by his scowl and the weapon in his hand.

  He fired as Dumarest watched, the beam searing plastic, burning a hole high and to one side.

  "Drop those clubs!" The laser fired again adding a second hole to the first. "Drop them, I say!"

  Again the laser vented its energy, closer this time, and Angado grunted as he slapped at the smoke rising from the edge of his robe.

  "Your last warning! Drop those clubs!"

  "Earl?"

  "Do it!"

  His own club followed Angado's to the floor, his eyes narrowed as he assessed the situation. The attackers had dropped at the signal of the firing, hugging the ground to give Gengiz an open field. The man himself stood too far away to be reached by a thrown knife even if the blade could travel fast enough to beat the speed of his finger. The clubs were gone.

  "Raise your hands," said Dumarest quietly. "Walk toward Gengiz. Stumble a little as if you're hurt. Beg if you want but do what he tells you."

  Angado threw him a glance then obeyed. He was a good actor. Dumarest followed him, stooped, one leg dragging, a hand clutching his chest.

  "Please!" Angado turned his raised hands palms outward, the fingers spread to demonstrate his defenselessness. "Don't hurt me. I had nothing to do with this. Look, I've got money, I'll pay-"

  "Shut up!" The muzzle of the laser remained aimed at his stomach. "Move over to one side. Faster." The gun signaled the direction, the beam of the flashlight searing into Angado's face. "You're not a monk. I know you. You killed my boys. You and-" The beam of the flashlight moved to Dumarest. He was crouched even lower, one hand pressed to his stomach, lurching as he moved forward. "Hold it!" Gengiz snarled as he recognized the face in the vivid light. "You're the other one. But why the robes? What the hell's going on?"

  "Money," said Dumarest. "The monks had it. We wanted it. Now we've got it. If you hadn't arrived we'd have got away. The guards wouldn't argue with a couple of monks breaking curfew. Not now it's after dawn."

  "Money?"

  "Sure. A lot of it. Show him, Angado."

  Dumarest moved as Gengiz turned toward the other man, flashlight and laser shifting targets. Both jerking back as, too late, he realized the mistake he'd made.

  The distance was too great for a knife even if he could have snatched it from his boot, but the axe had extra weight. Dumarest tore it from his belt, lifted it, threw it with all his strength as Gengiz turned. Smoke and flame spurted from his robe as the laser fired then Gengiz was down, the axe buried in his skull, blood and brains making a red-gray patina on his face.

  "Hold it!" Dumarest yelled at the men coming from the church. "He's dead! You want to join him?"

  He faced them, the laser he'd scooped up steady in his hand, searing the ground inches from the boots of the nearest man. Firing repeatedly until the men ran i
n panic, leaving them alone with the damaged church, the staring monks, the uncaring dead.

  Chapter Eight

  This time it was different; instead of the bizarre landscape with the solitary figure of the Cyber Prime there was a vaulted hall, a dais holding three thronelike chairs occupied by figures adorned with legalistic robes. A tribunal seated as if in judgment, faces dimmed and blurred in the flickering light of flambeaux. But if the scene was different the shock was the same.

  Avro drew in his breath and looked at his hands. Air filled his lungs and the hands were his own as were the feet, the arms, the robe which clothed his body. One now lying as if dead in his cabin on the ship resting on the surface of Velor.

  What was happening to him?

  Rapport was never like this and, since the time when he had apparently spoken to Marie, it had been as always. The contact, the exchange, the euphoria which yielded ecstasy and which resulted from electromagnetic stimulation of the pleasure center of the brain.

  A thought which startled him-was it true? And why should it have come to him at all?

  "Cyber Avro you may speak." The central figure lifted a hand, let it fall back to the arm of the chair, to grip it with long, spatulate fingers. "Your report?"

  One which could have been transmitted with the speed of thought now having to be vocalized.

  Avro was brief, ending with the finding of the grave. "The body was in the final stages of dissolution. Little remained but a skeleton and identification was impossible."

  "The size?"

  "Fitted the characteristics of both men dumped from the Thorn." Unnecessary detail-he had said that identification was impossible. Inefficiency compounded as he added, "The bones had been badly fretted but fitted the structure-scale relevant to the search. More could have been learned had we discovered the grave sooner."

  "Obviously." The tone was dry. "Continue."

  "The grave was on the site of what had been a camp. Radiated heat from the colony of scavenger beetles which had congregated on the spot registered on our instruments. The immediate terrain showed signs of having been stripped of fuel, and ash was found beneath a layer of sand. To one side, also beneath windblown sand, was found what could have been the landing spot of a vessel. Tests in the lower soil-strata confirm the size and weight of an object which could have been a ship." Avro paused, seeing again the glinting mass of chitin from the insects attracted to the water and food held in the body. The bones which first had seemed to be fashioned from tiny, mobile gems, turning gray and dusty as the scavengers fled from the light. The landing spot had been a ragged scar. "Tests revealed radiation levels in the local soil consistent with the generation of an Erhaft field."

  "Your conclusions?"

  "A vessel landed. A man was buried. The vessel departed."

  It was not enough and Avro knew it but there was reason for his brevity. Before him the seated figure stirred, those to either side remaining as motionless as before. Were they nothing but a part of the illusion? An addition to the flambeaux, the dais, the thrones, the vaulted chamber?

  It had to be illusion-but the central figure?

  It stirred again and Avro caught the impression of a host of faces blurring one into the other to form a montage at once familiar and strange. People he had known, cybers long gone to their reward, now the brains forming Central Intelligence. Was this the product of some dreaming mind toying with the creation of new frames of reference? The fruit of a whim?

  Of madness?

  "Brevity is always to be desired," said his inquisitor. "But brevity, carried to the extreme, verges on stupidity. Which vessel? What man? Elucidate."

  "The vessel is unknown," said Avro. "Working on the assumption that it could have been in distress, a wide search was made in order to determine if any radio signal had been received. The results were negative. The settlements on Velor lay to the far side of the plateau-I have described the terrain."

  "And?"

  "The man is also unknown. The probability that it is Dumarest is in the order of fifty percent. Two men were dumped," he explained. "Either could have died."

  "Or," said the central figure, "it could have been someone from the vessel."

  The obvious and Avro felt again the sickening sense of failure he had once known as a boy when new to the Cyclan. Even as he watched the dais blurred, the chamber, both becoming the bleak room in which he had sat for initial testing and tuition.

  "You." The man who had sat on a throne now stood behind a desk, warmly scarlet in his robe, his face one Avro would never forget. Cyber Cadell, coldly unforgiving, relentless in weeding out the unsuitable. "Come here and tell me if these are the same."

  Three blocks of plastic rested on the desk before him, all apparently identical. Avro stared at them, checking shape, color and size.

  "Well?"

  "Master, they are the same."

  Cadell said nothing but his hand turned over the blocks. The lower side of each was colored differently from the rest and no color was the same.

  "Master! I-"

  "You jumped to a false conclusion based on insufficient data. I did not say you were not allowed to touch them for a complete examination. A fault. Repeat it and the Cyclan will have no further use for you."

  The room dissolved, became again the vaulted chamber, but Cadell remained, his face replacing the blurred visage of the inquisitor.

  He said, "The ramifications of the problem are such that any prediction would be of such a low order of probability as to be almost valueless. The dead man could have come from the vessel; a passenger or a member of the crew. He could have been Dumarest or his companion. The grave itself need have nothing to do with either the ship or the man you are hunting. Coincidences do happen."

  Another test? Avro remembered the bleak room, the blocks of plastic, the same cold, watchful eyes of the tutor. It was tempting to accept the suggestion; coincidences did happen, but he knew this was not one of them. A conviction on the intuitive level as strong as that which told him Dumarest was still alive.

  But where? Where?

  * * *

  Ryder had cheated; the fee he'd paid over and above passage for work on the generator had been made up of cash and a pair of heavy bracelets ornately designed and studded with gems. The design was genuine but the metal was dross thinly plated with gold, the gems glass.

  "Fifty zobars." The jeweler had the visage of an old and weary bird of prey. "Fifty-and I'm being generous."

  Angado said, "You're robbing us."

  "Did I ask you to come to me? Am I making you stay?" The jeweler's shoulders lifted as if they had been wings. "Try elsewhere if you want but you'll get no better offer. Ladies here demand items of genuine worth and the poor cannot afford costly baubles. To sell them I must wait for a harlot with a bemused client or a lovesick fool eager to impress his mistress. Fifty zobars. That's my final offer."

  One raised to sixty as they reached the door, doubled when Dumarest added the laser Gengiz had used.

  Outside he headed for the baths. The robes had been discarded but the taint of violent exertion remained as did the stench of Lowtown. Both vanished in clouds of scented steam, icy showers, hot-rooms inducing a copious sweat. A nubile girl led them to a private cubicle.

  "Here you can rest, my lords. If you should require a massage I shall be happy to attend you."

  Angado said, quickly, "No. Just leave the oil. We'll manage the rest."

  "As you wish, my lord." Her tone was flat, devoid of emotion, but her eyes held a worldly understanding. "Some wine, perhaps? Stimulants? If there is anything you should require just press the bell."

  The button which gave access to a host of pleasures and all at a price.

  Dumarest relaxed on the couch, sweat dewing his naked body, hanging like pearls on the cicatrices marking his torso. Old scars long healed to thin, livid welts. Angado touched them, his fingers smooth with oil, pressing as they followed the line of muscle. His own body, unmarked, wore a halo of mist generated
by the heat and illuminated by overhead lights.

  "Hold still, Earl, you've a knot there!" His fingers probed, eased, moved on with skilled assurance. "I learned massage in the gymnasium at the university. Most students were short of funds and we saved by each treating the other. The instructors insisted we intersperse bouts of study with athletic pursuits so there were plenty of strained joints, pulled muscles and the like to take care of." His hands roved over the shoulders, the chest, the stomach. "These scars, Earl. The arena?"

  Dumarest rolled over to lie on his face.

  "The arena," said Angado. "None on your back so you had to be facing your opponent. And the way you fought showed skill. The way you taught me, too." His oiled thumbs ran up the sides, dug into the declivities alongside the spine. "But I'll never be as good as you are. Nor as fast." His hands fell to his sides. "That should do it. You want to rub me?"

  "Call the girl."

  "No." Angado mounted his own couch. "I'll do without." He lay silent for a while then said, "I've only seen two other men scarred like you. One was a fighter and I saw him in the arena on Rorsan. Kreagan, I think he was called, a big man, moved like a cat. A left-hander as I remember. He fought and won and afterward I bought him wine. He got a little drunk and started to boast. Said he could take on any three ordinary men at the same time. He also claimed there was nothing to match the excitement of facing an opponent. He said it was better than going with a woman." He turned on his couch to face Dumarest. "Was he right, Earl? Is it like that?"

  "For some, maybe."

  "And you?"

  Dumarest said, "What happened to your friend?"

  "Kreagan? He died shortly afterward. But-" Angado broke off. "I see. Fighting isn't a game and it isn't like going with a woman. Make one mistake and it's your last. Right?"

  "Yes." Dumarest looked at the floor beneath the couch, one set with a variety of colored squares. Turning he looked at the ceiling with its mass of abstract designs. Patterns designed to soothe and induce a restful somnolence. One negated by Angado. He said, "Who was the other man?"