"A hundred!" A leather-lunged man yelled the odds ten yards from where Urich was standing. "One gets you a hundred if you guess the moment of death to within five minutes. That's a ten-minute total bracket-how can you go wrong? A hundred to one! The best odds you'll get. You, sir? You?"
An accomplice in the crowd set the pace. "I'll take ten."
"To win a thousand. Time?"
"Sixteen hours fifty minutes." He added, "Tomorrow."
"A shrewd judge of form, sir. The thin ones have stamina." The bookie made out a slip and exchanged it for cash. "Now you, sir? Madam? Step up and make your bets!"
A vulture, but he wasn't alone. Others offered less odds for a wider bracket and they would shorten as time passed. Urich paced ten steps before the Wheel, turned, walked back to his previous position. The sun was warm on his back and shoulders, heating the helmet he wore and causing him to sweat. He touched neither the helmet nor the perspiration; as officer in charge of the detail he had to set an example. Even so it was hard to remain dispassionate.
"You there!" He snapped at the bookie. "Move away!"
"What? I-"
"Guards! Clear the area! No one within twenty yards. Move!"
Above him the dying man groaned.
It was a sound he didn't want to hear. Did his best not to hear, but it was impossible to avoid. For a moment he was tempted to use the laser holstered at his waist then sense returned and his hand fell from the weapon.
To kill would be an act of mercy-but the shot which ended the other's suffering would blast his own life to ruin.
"Captain?" A guard looked up at the groaning man. "He wants water."
Another mercy he dared not give, as the man should have known. Then he saw the young face and haunted eyes. This was a man new to the detail and yet to learn. But to him, at least, he could be kind.
"Take a break, soldier. Get a drink and duck your head. Fifteen minutes. Go!"
"Sir!"
He returned the salute and turned to see one of the other guards, an older man, stare at him with sympathetic understanding.
"Something wrong, Benson?"
"No, sir."
"You can take a break in turn when Carrol gets back."
"Thank you, sir. It will be appreciated." The guard looked at the crowd, the groaning figure. "I guess he'll be gone by dark. Midnight, I'd say." He inhaled, sweat gleaming on his face. "I won't be sorry to get back to normal duty."
He would be guarding the ships and patrolling the fence to make sure none robbed the Families of their dues. The Harradin and Marechal, the Duuden and the Yekatania-all had a vested interest in landing fees and taxes, cargo-tithes and repair costs. As they had in the auctions and markets, the open dealing, the free license which provided the main revenue of Krantz.
In which, soon now, he would share.
He paced on, turned, paced back hoping the sound of his boots would drown out the groans. A forlorn hope-only the excited shouts of the backers did that. A flurry of bets based on experience and greed. It took an effort not to let them annoy him. A greater effort to remember that, as a potential member of the Yeketania, he would be partially responsible for similar scenes to come.
"Sir?" It was one of the Ypsheim. A woman with a canteen in her hand. "Please, sir, could I give him some water? Just a little, sir. Please."
"It is forbidden."
"Just a drop, sir." She stepped closer, lowering her voice. "One drink, sir, and in an hour he will be dead. I swear it."
Beneath the grime her face held beauty and her hair, rich and full, belied the dust greying the strands. The man's daughter? His wife?
"Captain." Her hand reached out to touch his arm. "One drink, sir, and he'll be at peace. Be merciful and I'll give you anything you want. Do anything you want." Then, as he shook his head, "For God's sake-what kind of a man are you?"
"Move!" Benson was between them, his baton held in both hands, pushing against the woman, sending her back into the crowd. "Get away from here! All of you-back! Back, I say!"
The incident was common enough and over as soon as started, but it left a taste which lingered. One which soured his mouth as Urich paced before the Wheel. A woman pleading to give the surcease of death. Killing from motives of love. She would have given him anything he'd asked for if he'd agreed.
Would Eunice have done that for him?
He imagined her standing as the woman had stood, young, her beauty masked by dust and grime, pleading with a man she must have hated. Pleading yet promising and willing to keep her promise. His daughter, they would have thought. As he had thought-but was it so strange for a man to marry a younger woman?
One young enough to be his child?
At the rear of the crowd the woman with the canteen said, "You were wrong, Leo. He isn't what you thought."
"Because he refused you?"
"I read his eyes. They were hard, cold. He is of the Quelen."
"Not yet, Ava. He has yet to be married. What you read in his eyes was fear."
"I looked for understanding."
"He has it-later he may show it."
"And Gupen?" Her eyes strayed upward to the Wheel, the man lashed to it. "What about him?"
"A hundred to one!" yelled the bookie. "Place your bets! A chance to make a fortune! You, sir? Fifteen and the time?" Money and paper changed hands. "Thirteen ten tomorrow. A wise choice. And you, sir? And you? And you?"
On the Wheel the man twitched and groaned as insects gnawed into his flesh.
He was a mote drifting through an infinity of darkness touched with transient gleams. Sparkles which vanished as soon as observed; shimmers which spread as if to illuminate the universe and then yielded again to darkness. An analogy Avro could understand, as it was a model he could appreciate for its bare simplicity. The darkness was ignorance and the gleams the flowering of reasoning intelligence. A birth repeated again and again and each time, as yet, flaring only to die. Sense and logic destroyed time and again by the forces of brute ignorance, but one day the cold glow of reason would eliminate all shadows and would illuminate the entire universe with its radiant splendor.
This was the ideal to which he had dedicated his life.
Avro moved, feeling nothing, not knowing if he had moved at all. The mental command had been given and his body should have obeyed, but here, in the tank, he was divorced from all external sensation. Locked in an electronic web, drifting in a controlled temperature, blind, deaf, unaware of direction, he lacked any point of reference by which to gain orientation.
An experiment-one which had killed.
Not the sensory deprivation itself-all cybers were accustomed to that-but the fields which now lay open for him to investigate. The path Elge had beaten and which had turned him into an idiot, but Avro had followed it and was still following.
What had driven Elge mad?
Not the expanding consciousness of the mind, for that was common to all cybers when achieving rapport with the massed brains of Central Intelligence. To use the Samatchazi formulae to activate the grafted Homochon elements in his brain. To become as one with the massed brains, to merge and be encompassed in that tremendous gestalt which spanned the known galaxy. To yield information which, instantly assimilated, could be evaluated and passed on to other cybers. To receive data and instruction in turn and then, when rapport was broken, to drift in a mind-dazzling intoxication.
The recordings?
They had been taken from aberrated units forming a node. The minds composing it had built systems of logic based on a variety of premises and their models were flawless examples of the power of detached reasoning. But they were products of insanity; the premises chosen had borne no relation to the actual universe and so the models served no useful function. Yet each held a certain beauty. An individual fascination. Mazes in which the mind could wander to be enticed by tantalizing concepts. To become lost and disoriented and…