"You admit it?"
"But, of course. What point is there in denying the ob shy;vious?"
Dumarest moved, stooping, his hand flashing to the hilt of the knife in his boot, lifting the pointed, razor-edged steel. Sunlight gleamed from the blade as he swept it back and then forward, the point aimed at the other man's stomach.
Yalung sprang forward and to one side, his left hand dropping to grasp the knife-wrist; twisting, his right hand jerking free the steel. As Dumarest struck at his throat he moved again, stepping to avoid the blow, the stiffened fin shy;gers of his left hand stabbing like blunted spears.
Dumarest staggered, fighting a red tide of agony, his right arm numbed and paralyzed.
"You are fast," said Yalung. "Very fast. But not fast enough to one who has trained on Kha." He looked at the knife and tossed it casually to one side. Dumarest watched its flight.
"You? A Kha'tung fighter?"
"You know of us?" Yalung's smile was a facial distortion without real meaning. "Can you imagine what it is like? For twenty years I trained on a high-gravity planet with pain as the constant reward for laggard reflexes. You should be proud that I was chosen. No lesser man would have been able to overcome you so easily."
He was confident but with justification. Fighting the pain of impacted nerves Dumarest studied the figure in yellow and black. The round plumpness wasn't the fat he had as shy;sumed but a thick layer of trained and hardened muscle. The broad hands, soft as they appeared, could smash timber and brick, stab deep into vital organs. A Kha'tung fighter was a deadly machine.
Dumarest said, "Why?"
"You are curious," said Yalung. "Well, we have time to spare until a ship arrives. He stepped close and stared into Dumarest's eyes. "Sit," he ordered, and pushed.
The blow was the thrust of an iron ram. Dumarest fell backwards, staggering, falling to roll on the soft grass. Awk shy;wardly he sat upright, his left hand massaging his right arm. A random shaft of light caught the gem on his finger and turned it into ruby flame.
"The past," said Yalung. "Let us throw our minds back into time." He sat crossed legged, facing Dumarest at a safe distance of a dozen feet, his back towards the dead body of the girl. "Let us talk of names. Of Solis, of Brasque, of Kalin. I am sure that you remember Kalin."
"I remember."
"An unusual woman," said Yalung. "Most unusual. But let us start with Brasque. You never met him because he died before you reached Solis, but before he died he gave his sister the gift of life. Real life in a warm and healthy body. That secret he stole from the laboratory of the Cyclan. It must be returned."
Dumarest sat, patiently waiting, his left hand continuing its massage.
"The secret was that of an artificial symbiote named an affinity twin. It consists of fifteen units and the reversal of one unit makes it either subjective or dominant. Injected into the bloodstream it nestles in the rear of the cortex, meshes with the thalamus and takes control of the central nervous system. I need hardly tell you what that means."
The intelligence of a crippled body given active life in a healthy host. The ability of one brain to completely dominate another. Dumarest had good reason to know what it meant.
"No," he said. "You don't have to tell me."
"The path Brasque took has been followed and all pos shy;sibilities of his passing the secret to others eliminated. The probability that he delivered the secret to his sister on Solis is one of the order of 99 percent-practical certainty. In shy;vestigations have proved that the secret is not on that planet so, logically, it must be elsewhere. Do you agree?"
"You talk like a cyber," said Dumarest. "A thing of flesh and blood, a machine, a creature devoid of the capability of emotion."
Yalung's eyes glittered in the round blandness of his face. "You think you insult me," he said. "Let me assure you that to be called a cyber is far from that. To belong to the Cyclan is not easy. To wear the scarlet robe is to be clad in honor."
Did the voice hold pride? Pride was an emotion and no cyber could feel anything other than pleasure in mental achievement. An operation on the sensory nerves leading to the brain removed all pain, hurt, anger, love, the pleasure to be found in food and wine, the caresses of women.
Dumarest eased himself a little, moving on the grass. "I follow your argument and admit your point."
"The rest is simple, a matter of extrapolating from known data. You were on Solis at the time. You were close to the sister of Brasque. You were given the gift of a ring. The probability of the ring holding the secret is in the order of 90 percent."
"And you killed Lallia for that?" Dumarest glanced to shy;wards the dead girl, then at the squatting figure before him. "I have the ring. Why not kill me and take it?"
"Because that would be illogical," said Yalung. "Too much time has passed. You could have learned the secret or have changed the ring. To kill you would have been to lose a source of information for all time." He paused, eyes watch shy;ful. "The secret is a matter of the correct sequence of the molecular units composing the chain. There are fifteen units. Their nature is known. All that remains is to discover the order in which they must be united. But the task is not easy.
If it were possible to test one combination every sec shy;ond it would take over four thousand years to test them all. And there are reasons why the Cyclan cannot wait. Good reasons. But now they need wait no longer."
"The ring is just what it seems," said Dumarest. "It con shy;tains no secret."
"I think that you lie. Twice I offered to buy it from you and each time you refused to sell. The price was high for such a bauble and your refusal convinced me that you were aware of its true worth." Yalung glanced once be shy;hind him as if sensing the presence of some entity, but the avenue and the space between the trees was deserted. "I should have had you safe on Aarn. I killed the thief who tried to rob you in the hotel. Normally the police would have arrested you and the ring would have come into my possession while you would have been kept safely in prison. But you were too quick. I could do nothing but follow you into the Web. Once in, I had no choice but to continue as I had begun."
An accident, thought Dumarest. The unpredictable work shy;ings of destiny. A primitive sense of danger and the quick grasping of an opportunity. Who could have predicted that one man would kill another at that exact place and time? Or that he would have been given the dead man's job?
Quietly he said, "And now?"
"You are my patient. A poor fool touched in the brain who is not responsible for what he says and what he does. I shall take passage on the next ship for us both and you will be drugged and bound for the entire journey. I have the means to charter the vessel if that will be necessary." Yalung slapped his belt. "My pouch of precious stones. Genuine jewels of high value. Ten times their worth will be mine when I have delivered you to the Cyclan."
Dumarest lifted his left hand from his right arm and looked at the ring. The impacted nerves had recovered a little but the arm still felt numb, was still unreliable. He raised his right hand and began to fumble with the ring.
"You want this," he said. "You had better take it."
His fingers were too awkward. He lifted the ring and held it between his teeth, pulling until it slipped free. It fell and he scrabbled for it, easing himself back over the grass. Picking it up with his right hand he held it so that it caught the light.
"If this contains such a valuable secret then perhaps you are selling it too cheap?"
"The bargain is satisfactory."