"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?"
"The one with the scars? A monk. Brother Lyndom. He was old and was giving me tuition. We went swimming one day and I saw his body. It was horrible. All seared and puckered as if burned and torn. Later I learned that he'd been tortured on some world where he'd gone to set up a church but when I asked him what had happened he just laughed and said he'd run into a swarm of angry bees. I guess that's why I respect monks. I wanted to be one once, but that was before I learned I had no real choice in determining my future. And perhaps it wasn't in me. I'm too much of a coward to face what they put up with."